


The Edge of Summer

by evakuality



Category: Druck | SKAM (Germany)
Genre: Childhood Friends, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:28:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25685059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evakuality/pseuds/evakuality
Summary: Matteo's spent the summer away from home, away from his friends and away from his thoughts about his future.  Now he's home again and some uncomfortable feelings are creeping up on him: his last year of school is starting, his friends are all sure of where they're heading in life while he feels like he has no idea.  Worst of all, some long-buried feelings are surfacing when he sees David again.  Matteo's pretty sure that he, and his newly-toned muscles, are going to be the death of him.
Relationships: Matteo Florenzi/David Schreibner
Comments: 78
Kudos: 127





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a tumblr prompt: "we grew up as best friends but you got hot over the summer can i touch ur biceps AU" - it morphed a bit from there into something much bigger and more involved. But that was its origin. 
> 
> It's told in a mix of current-time and flashbacks but they're hopefully well enough signposted that it makes sense.

_ Late Summer 2019 _

It’s the end of summer, and the days are starting to change, a noticeable chill seeping in around the edges of the nights as the leaves start to shed their green in exchange for brilliant reds and golds. Usually, the end of summer brings with it a twinge of sadness, the long sigh of knowing that endless lazy days are over and the reality of school, and the routines of classes and homework, is setting in. 

David always scoffs at Matteo when he gets like that because he’s a weirdo who actually likes going back to school. He says there’s a certain comfort in the routines of the new year, seeing everyone again and greeting teachers. Matteo grumpily complains that’s just because David has always known what he wants to do when he leaves school while Matteo even struggles to decide on what he wants to wear on any given day. 

These complaints always end up with some sort of tussling match with the other boys joining in and all of them madly scrabbling to end up the victor. Matteo tends to end up on the bottom of the pile, breathless and laughing and managing to forget that not knowing what to do with his life isn’t all that cool. He’s always had himself convinced that he has time to think about all that later. He figures that some nebulous time after school is done he’ll just  _ know, _ and something will show up.

This year, though. This year Matteo is eager for the summer to be over. Summer this year has dragged on mercilessly while he’s been in Italy. Part of him knows charitably that it’s actually been very lovely, has enjoyed reconnecting with his cousins and aunts and uncles and his father’s new family. Part of him has revelled in the long, soporific days spent by the lake, the huge meals prepared by his nonna and the chance to just relax.

But a very large part of him has been unbearably homesick. He’s missed Jonas, David and the guys. He’s even missed the girls. Hanna with her warm understanding (and the camaraderie they share in knowing they have no idea what to do when they leave school). Amira with her sharp wit and her fierce loyalty, the way she manages to make him study with sheer force of will. The others, too. Even Kiki, as grating as she can sometimes be.

That part of him desperately wants to see the guys again. That part of him bounces his feet irritably as the plane seems to take an eternity to get back to Berlin. He doesn’t even have anyone on board to talk to. He’s travelling alone, and the guy on one side is firmly asleep while the woman on the other has her nose buried in a book and shifts in irritation when his bouncing leg gets too enthusiastic and encroaches onto her space.

So Matteo leans his head back against the headrest and tries to pass the time thinking back to other summers. Back when things were easy, when his family was still intact, his mother a warm, kind presence in his life and his friendships all based on who lived closest. Back when you didn’t have to worry about what you might want to do when you left school; back when it was all possibility and summers spread out like wide oceans of heat and fun. Even then, Jonas and David had been Matteo’s best friends, living so close to each other and spending so much time together that they were considered as a single unit, an incorrigible trio, getting into too many scrapes to count.

_ Mid Summer 2012 _

“Sssssh, you need to be quiet.”

David’s voice is imperious, even through the quiet hiss of his tone. Matteo shares a look with Jonas and they both snigger, unrepentant. David turns to glare at them both, his hands on his hips, the torch he’s just lit casting odd shadows behind him because of the awkward angle he has it set on his hip.

“If you two don’t shut up, I’m going to leave you here in the dark because neither of you bothered with a torch.”

That catches Matteo's attention sure enough. He doesn’t much like dark places, and would rather not be left here with no light. Not even with Jonas for company. Jonas is about to say something smartass back, Matteo recognises the look in his eye. So he digs him viciously in the ribs to keep him silent, and his ‘ouch’ drowns out whatever else he was about to say.

The heat is muffled in here, in the darkened room. It’s not the bright, glaring, merciless beating of the sun during the day, but it’s no less intense. The air here is suffocating, almost damply visible even in the dark, and it presses in on them. It’s hard to take a breath because the heat is so stifling. Not that it’s stopping them; they’ve been meaning to come in here all summer and the days are slipping away too quickly. Opportunity is fast running away from them. So here they are, on a night that’s too hot and too damp, standing next to their prize.

Once he seems satisfied that the others will stop making too much noise, David turns back to the door in front of them. He shines his torch onto it, revealing that it’s slightly ajar. He crows his delight.

“Come on,” he says, grinning back over his shoulder at the others as he leans in and pushes the door.

It creaks alarmingly as he presses against it, and Jonas snorts. Matteo shushes him with one wave of his hand but secretly he agrees with the sentiment. It seems ridiculous to quiet their voices if the very building is going to work against them in this way.

“Fuck,” David says, apparently working that out for himself. He stops for a moment and shines the torch again. The door has slipped maybe an inch before resisting. David glares at it, turns so his back is against it and pushes again. It groans even louder this time, but still doesn’t budge.

“Here, mate,” Jonas says, pushing up beside him. “Matteo and I will help you. Maybe three weak little bodies will work when one doesn’t.”

Obligingly, Matteo leans against the door on David’s other side and shoves it as hard as he can. As he focuses on the door he notices the scowl on David’s face.

“I’m  _ not _ weak,” Matteo can make him out, muttering under his breath, his face flushed red in the low light from the torch. 

Since Matteo clearly isn’t intended to see or hear the moment, he pulls his gaze away. But the memory sticks with him, of David angrily putting all his effort into making the door move to prove something to them, or maybe to himself.

Between them, and with a lot of effort and not inconsiderable noise, they finally get the door wide enough that they can all squeeze through. On the other side, is something magical: a wide cavernous room, with decaying but still beautiful friezes decorating the ceiling, showing up only in the bright flashes from David's torch. It’s filled with an eerie echoing silence, as if the walls are both listening to them and throwing their insignificant footsteps back at them.

“Why did we come at night?” Matteo wonders. He’d love to have seen this in daylight, can imagine the pale yellows of the walls and the lighter shades of the molding around the tops. He can picture the golden sunlight glinting on them, their beauty perhaps only emphasised by the crumbling and peeling paint around them.

“Because in daylight we’d have more chance of being caught, dumbass,” David says, pushing him and knocking him out of his reverie. The few stumbling steps he takes sends an echo reverberating through the room and Matteo hears a delighted whoop from his right.

Matteo shakes himself and looks around, trying to pinpoint the source of the noise. In the dim light cast by David’s torch, he can see that Jonas has climbed up onto a pile of rubble in one corner. Matteo admires Jonas’s courage; he’d love to be able to take those sorts of risks but he shudders at the thought of stumbling in the dark, of scraping up his legs and the way his mother would surely react.

He’s not scared, exactly. He just doesn’t want to have to explain where he was and what they were doing. His family’s not been one that deals well with breaking rules and stepping out of line. He knows they wouldn’t condone this sort of youthful exploration. So he stays on firm ground and hopes he hasn’t become too dusty pushing against the door earlier.

He’s about to say something mocking Jonas, to make his own reticence seem less cowardly, but a loud boom deeper into the building makes him freeze. Then in the distance he can pick up a tiny pinpoint of light and his heart stops. The heavy sound of boots on concrete echoes through to them, quiet but still distinct even at the distance they must be, and Matteo finds he’s lost all ability to breathe.

He looks over at David whose mouth has dropped open, and whose torch beam has spilled downwards to the floor, casting his face in an eerie glow. There’s a scuffling from the direction Jonas had been standing, a rustle as stones cascade down the pile he’d been on. A quiet, “fuck, fuck, fuck,” punctuates the air and Matteo breathes a sigh of relief that he seems to be safe, if irritated.

Still, it’s several seconds before his body figures out what they need to do, and he squeaks, “run” before turning and bolting towards the door they’d entered through, pursued by the bobbing and weaving of David’s torch as he runs too. The beam casts an uneven light over the walls in front of Matteo, but he’s at least able to pick out the door they’d come through.

The gap is so small that it’s an agonising extra few seconds before they’ve all squeezed through and have managed to make their way out into the warm air of the summer night. They’re panting as they run full tilt away from the building and collapse in a heap a few blocks away once David deems it safe to slow down.

“I thought you said we wouldn’t get caught,” Matteo huffs once he has his breath back enough to speak, still panting with his hands on his knees for support as he leans over trying to suck in enough breath to steady himself. “Running like that was torture!”

David, who is lying with his arms splayed out behind his head and looking totally at ease as if they hadn’t just been running seconds earlier, turns to grin up at him.

“What’s the matter? You scared of a little exercise?”

Jonas laughs, the sound rich in the deep night surrounding them. Matteo feels something hot and painful swelling in his chest at the sound. He’s not sure why the sound of Jonas’s laugh makes him feel this way, but it’s uncomfortable and he doesn’t want to think about any of it right now. He just wants to flop down in the sweet smelling grass with his friends, enjoying their summer just being together. So he pushes the thought away with a frown and lies between his two best friends.

“Fuck both of you,” he says. 

But what he really means is that he wants these summers to last an eternity, for the three of them to be best friends in trouble for the rest of their lives. He wants nothing to ever change any of this. If he could, Matteo thinks he’d like to live in this night forever.

_ Late Summer 2019 _

Matteo snorts at himself when he remembers that night. He’s not much better at exercise even now, fitness not being something he really cares about. Not when he could do something more interesting like Mario Kart or some other game that requires dexterity, yes, but no aerobic effort.

They’d got better at exploration, though. After that first foray, they’d gone through other buildings over the years. Ruined bunkers, and theme parks. Soaring towers, and tiny spaces they could barely all squeeze into. Beautiful rooms filled with breathtaking details, and plain, utilitarian buildings. They all had something special to offer, which made them fascinating in their own right. It always gave them a rush, too, a sense of adventure and shared wrongdoing. As far as Matteo knows, his parents never found out, or at least they never lectured him about it. 

Nothing ever gave him the same feeling as that first night, though. Maybe it was the thrill of almost being caught, maybe it was just that it had seemed such a moment polished in amber, something about being in the dark, the warmth and heat melting its way into Matteo’s subconscious. The simple beauty of being with his best friends shimmered in the velvet of a warm summer’s night of freedom.

He’s pulled from his thoughts when the woman next to him puts her book away, bumping his arm in the process, and the plane makes its final descent. Out the window Matteo can see the city, laid out with its lights bright and glimmering in the quiet of the night. His heart swells. He’s almost home. Leaning forward, he watches as the plane tilts, laying the lights out in an even wider glittering array, the distance slipping away so quickly it’s almost dizzying.

Matteo smiles, lets himself be content. He’s going to see his best friends soon, able to tuck them up into a warm hug and hear their laughter over something other than a tiny screen. There are a few days left before school, too. Days in which they might be able to explore again before the drudgery of their final year at school sets in. Days where he can pretend to still have an endless glittering summer ahead of him.

He’s one of the last off, too caught up in his memories to gather his things in any sort of hurry, so he’s one of the last ones to step through into the area where his friends are all ranged, waiting for him.

He grins, taking them in, his heart only just now remembering exactly why he loves being with them so much. Even here they’re making a scene. Carlos and Abdi are cavorting, chasing each other through the space while Jonas cheers them on. David stands apart, watching them all with an amused and long-suffering smile on his face.

While Matteo watches them, David looks up and spots him. His face splits into a wide grin and Matteo realises he’s fucked. He’s been pushing his feelings aside for the whole summer, and he’d been close, so close, to admitting that he likes David as more than a friend. To himself. To David. He’d almost blurted it out just before he got on the plane to return, but he’d managed to convince himself that it was just absence and a longing for the camaraderie of their youth. 

But now David is looking at him, and Matteo can’t deny it any longer. He has feelings for his best friend, and he’s not sure what to do about them. David’s running, his face lit up with excitement and his arms wide open. The distanced, almost superior, attitude he was trying to hold onto while watching the other boys now gone in his delight that Matteo is back.

He knocks Matteo almost clean off his feet when he collides into a huge hug. Matteo’s arms come around David to pull him in close. These hugs are one thing he’s always loved: David gives the best hugs, firm and strong and lasting just exactly the right length of time.

Behind David, Matteo can hear the hollers of the others as they also notice that he arrived, and his heart leaps again. They all pile on behind the hug, knocking David more firmly into Matteo, not that he cares really. His arms press David closer and he can feel the firm muscles of his back under his fingers. It ignites something in Matteo, the way they feel - solid and strong, stable and warm.

But soon enough he’s pulling back and the warmth of David's arms is gone. To cover for the small jolt of loss that creates, Matteo steps back and picks up his gear that dropped on the floor when David accosted him. He feels light, much lighter than he has in the long months in Italy as pleasant as they were.

“Matteo! Matteo! You have to feel this, dude.”

Carlos is tugging at his sleeve, trying to direct his attention towards something he seems inordinately proud of. Confused, Matteo lets him drag him a few steps to the side to where David is now standing and looking amused.

“David, do the thing, man,” Abdi joins in, plucking at David's sleeve as he does so. 

“Come on, no-one wants to see that,” David tries, clearly used to this behaviour if his laughter and rolled eyes are anything to go by. But the boys are persistent and so he rolls his eyes again and lifts his arm in preparation.

Matteo suddenly knows what he’s going to do and his breath catches in his throat. If he thought he was fucked before, this is really going to test him. Sure enough, David flexes, showing off his arm muscles through the tight fabric of his long sleeved t-shirt. Matteo’s throat goes dry as he watches. 

If the feeling of David’s back muscles was intoxicating, then the sight of his arms is something else entirely, curling a hot desire into Matteo’s belly and making him blush even before Carlos excitedly grabs his fingers and presses them onto the solid, firm slope. 

Matteo swallows, and his fingers clench slightly around them, earning him a charming, delighted smile from David.

“Isn’t that fucking amazing?” Abdi is saying. “He’s so ripped it’s not even funny anymore.”

He’s not though, Matteo thinks, letting his fingers drop reluctantly away. The muscles are not overdone, huge and out of proportion the way so many supposedly hot guys’ muscles are. No, they’re perfect, obviously the product of days and months of care and attention, honed into something special by repeated movement, day in and day out. Made perfect through sheer desire.

It takes every ounce of Matteo’s effort to grin back at the boys and say something noncommittally positive about the way David's body has changed. Every inch of him thrums with the recognition of the differences, but he can’t show it. Not here. Not safely.

David’s gaze rests on him, warm and happy. As if he can read the sincerity in Matteo’s words even while the other boys chastise him for being too lukewarm about it all, David smiles. The shared look sets Matteo's heart at ease and he relaxes, joining in more easily with the banter as they all depart the airport.

Eventually it’s just the two of them, in Matteo’s bedroom as he unpacks the bags he’d taken to Italy. They’re filled with the meaningless, trashy souvenirs Matteo always seems drawn to when he visits, things that had seemed important in the hot sun of the summer, but which seem tacky and ridiculous in the mundane reality of his room.

David’s lying on the bed, arms behind his head, and a twinkle in his eye as he watches Matteo drag them all out and line them up along his dresser. It’s ridiculously distracting, those arms stretching the fabric of the shirt tight over the muscles again. Matteo’s only surviving being in their presence by focusing all his attention on the careful alignment of each individual ornament.

“I can’t believe it’s been so many weeks since you left,” David finally says. “Summer’s almost over and we hardly spoke at all.”

Matteo glances over at him, taken aback by the soft sadness in his voice. This has never characterised their relationship at all, this sort of strange melancholy. It makes Matteo swallow around a sudden blockage in his throat. He’s not ready to think about the summer being over, and having missed out on so much.

It’s uncomfortably reminiscent of the last day the two of them were here like this, when Matteo was pretending with all his energy that he didn’t care that they wouldn’t see each other for so many long weeks. 

_ Early Summer 2019 _

“It’s going to be so much fun,” Matteo says, his voice as cheerful as he can make it, though he can hear the gratingly pleasant tone he’s putting on as it sets his own teeth on edge. “My dad says they got a new place and there’s a lake nearby, and the cousins are all old enough to be decent-”

He’s chattering too quickly, he knows. It’s not really covering exactly what he’s feeling, but he hopes that by prattling on without a pause, he can somehow steamroller over whatever painful thing is happening here.

“We have a lake,” David points out. His face, when Matteo chances a look at him, is thunderous, brows pulled into a frown and his chin jutted out the way it always does when he’s feeling obstinate. There’s a vulnerability hiding behind his eyes and the show of bravado, which David isn’t able to keep shut away.

Just like that, Matteo isn’t able to keep up his facade, and he drops his fingers away from the bag he’s been shoving his clothes into. He sinks down onto the bed next to David and sighs.

“It sucks,” he says, agreeing with the sentiment rather than David’s actual words. If he were asked, which he hadn’t been, he’d have begged to be allowed to stay here, to have one last summer with his friends. He would far rather be exploring around the city with Jonas and David than trapped in some house with a new family he’s hardly ever met. All he wants to do is recapture the joy and beauty of that time when they were young and carefree and no-one gave a shit about what they wanted to do when they left school. 

Instead, he’s gathering his belongings and going away from everything he genuinely loves, into the arms of a father who loves him but who has such specific expectations of him that being near him is painful. Worse, things probably wouldn’t be the same even if he stayed here. David is here, but Jonas is somewhere with Hanna and nothing is the way it was before.

“Why the fuck does everything have to change?”

David shrugs, a small smile on his face. “Because that’s what happens when we grow up,” he says. 

“Growing up sucks, then,” Matteo says, grumpily. Summers used to shine in his heart, but now all he can see is a stale and stagnant time without any of the delight summers usually bring.

He flops down onto his bed and throws his arms back over his head, lets one drop down to cover his eyes so David can’t see the wistful anxiety that’s twisting its way into his chest and almost certainly onto his face.

David seems to see through him anyway. His mouth opens and there’s a newly kind expression on his face when he turns to Matteo and pulls his arm off his face to smile down at him, but then there’s a rattle of knuckles on the door frame and Jonas pokes a grinning face around the door.

“Wow this party sure is a downer,” he says, looking at the two of them where they sit dejected on Matteo’s bed.

Matteo groans, his arm dropping back to cover his face again once he ascertains who it is. “I’m doomed to a shitty summer,” he mutters. “I deserve a downer party.”

“Nooooo,” Jonas protests, dragging at his arm and trying to pull him up off the bed. “You still have two whole days here and we’re not wasting them in this sort of pity party!”

“I have to pack, Jonas,” Matteo protests as Jonas manages to pull him off the bed to plonk unceremoniously on the floor.

Jonas turns his attention to David, who puts up less resistance and therefore doesn’t end up thudding onto the hard wood of the floor. 

“Nope,” Jonas insists. “You’re coming out with us.”

Matteo rolls his eyes, but is willing to go along with it. He doesn’t really want to pack anyway. Packing is too much like admitting that it’s really happening, that he’s really having to leave.

“What are we doing?” Matteo asks once he’s picked himself up off the floor and straightened himself up. Finding some new building to poke around in would be a good end to all this, he thinks. They could bottle up some of the same feelings they got that long ago day in the cavernous room with the beautiful walls.

“Hanna and the girls are having a party,” Jonas says, letting out a whoop of delight as they both relent.

“Sounds great,” David says, spinning to look at Matteo, his face lit up at the thought of a good party. Matteo tries to smile naturally as he nods his agreement.

Of course Jonas wants to spend time with Hanna. She’s his girlfriend after all. Of course the boys don’t want to revisit old times. They’re both ready for the future, paths ahead lying wide and bright in front of them. They don’t have a looming twist in their roads hiding their futures and making them want to cling to a past that glitters in memory as a beacon of hope.

_ Late Summer 2019 _

Matteo shakes himself to get rid of the memory. That’s all in the past now, he’s home, and what he should be doing is focusing on David. He’s right here in the room with Matteo, so all this introspection and melancholy is just wasting precious time, even if it seems like it’s affecting David too. Time Matteo could be spending with his friends enjoying the last few precious moments of summer is being lost while they sit here.

He glances over at David, who’s still lying back on the bed with his hands tucked in behind his head. He’s shifted, though, slid down a little and it’s pulled his shirt even tighter over the planes of his arms, emphasising and defining his muscles. Matteo goes silent for an entirely different reason, his mouth dry and a sudden swoop diving into his belly.

If it was bad at the airport, curling hot desire into Matteo’s body, here it’s close to unbearable. When it’s just the two of them, the feelings hit closer and harder, and Matteo finds it much harder to pretend like he isn’t affected. It’s not just the biceps either; they’re just the most immediate, obvious thing that draws attention to just how attractive David has become. Or rather to how attractive he’s always been, but which Matteo has always managed to ignore for the sake of keeping their friendship.

Now though. Now the sight of David is overwhelming and everything Matteo has successfully pushed down is dangerously close to the surface, ambushing him with a power and intensity that’s scary. Matteo drags his eyes away, trying to ignore vibrant eyes, glowing skin, defined jawline and the hint of facial hair that all combine to flip his insides out.

So he returns to his unpacking and eventually responds to David’s words. “Summer’s not over yet,” he says. “We can still have some fun. Just like old times.”

He hears rather than sees the shuffle as David grins and gets ready to tease. Something light takes flight in Matteo’s chest; as much as he’d love to deny it, he’s always loved the way David teases him. It’s never nasty, just a shared recognition of the differences between them that make them work well together.

He’s not disappointed.

“Old times like you getting winded from a three second run?” David says, his voice filled with his amusement.

This time Matteo’s glance at him shows him eyes lit up and a grin split wide over his face. He rolls his eyes.

“It was more than three seconds and you know it.”

David laughs, the sound rich and vibrant. It sends waves of something through Matteo and he’s helpless to resist it. He laughs too, a reluctant chuckle drawn out of him as he acknowledges his own attempts to deflect.

“Old times when we didn’t have to worry about anything,” he says quietly.

For a few long seconds David examines him, his eyes fixed on Matteo's face and there’s a strange sense that he understands what’s going on inside Matteo’s head. Understands that he’s worried about the year to come, about finishing school, about still having no idea who he is or where he’s going.

“Okay,” David says, drawing the word out like it’s precious, important in some way. He nods decisively. “Okay then. We’ll have a couple of days just like old times.”

They share a look, and Matteo can feel David’s own sadness seeping through in that look. There’s a shared sense of something lost. As if David, too, misses the days of old when they could just be and when being caught somewhere they shouldn’t be was an adventure. As if he, too, regrets the lost summer and everything they missed out on doing together.

There’s promise in that look and Matteo pushes away all the fears and worries, the aching longing that’s been plaguing him for the last few weeks. He pushes away the swooping, fluttering thing that invades whenever he looks at David, and decides he’s going to enjoy this time. With David. With Jonas if he’ll come. They have these last few days on the edge of summer and they can make them count.


	2. Chapter 2

_ Late Summer 2019 _

Matteo’s exhausted, eyes sliding closed occasionally as he tries to concentrate. The flight was long, and his keyed-up excitement about seeing everyone means he was on high alert the entire time and unable to nap. Now that he’s home, and the heightened energy has worn off, he’s ready to fall into his bed and sleep away everything, his body yearning towards it with an aching intensity. 

The problem is that David is here with his eyes filled with some sort of melancholy, and they’re both expressing dismay at the speed with which the summer is ending. So Matteo can’t sleep. A need burns through him - to be soaking up every second he can from these last few precious days, to be making it all count before they have to face reality and the pressure cooker that is school and his future. 

“You wanna do something?” he asks, tilting his head so he can look over at David, whose lips quirk in a small smile as he nods, looking at his hands. “Go somewhere cool?”

“Yeah,” David says, almost too quietly to hear. “Yeah, let the last weekend start now.”

Grinning, Matteo holds his hand up for a fist bump. It’s something they do a lot, a fist bump to declare a new adventure, and David's mouth tilts up into a smile, bigger and more genuine than the ones he’s been wearing, as he reciprocates.

“Should we check in with Jonas?” Matteo asks. He’s reluctant to break this peace or whatever it is that is happening between the two of them, here in a space governed by exhaustion and proximity. But it’s always been the three of them: Matteo, David and Jonas, against the world and everyone in it. Declaring an adventure for just the two of them seems wrong.

David seems to feel something of the same reluctance, but also acknowledges the commitment to the declaration. His lip is sucked in between his teeth and he looks at Matteo for several seconds too long before he nods. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Text him.”

Dragging his phone out of his pocket, Matteo is hit with a tiny stab of regret. If they hadn’t used the old code, they might have been able to do something just the two of them. That he wants it to be just them scares Matteo almost as much as the idea of having to work out what he wants to do with his life, so he’s half hopeful that Jonas will join them. He sends the message quickly then chucks the phone down so he can get ready to head out.

He’s pulling on some shoes, and grabbing a torch - an old fashioned nod to their youth - when his phone buzzes. Then once more before he can pick it up.

_ Sorry bro I’m busy, _ the first message reads. Then  _ We’ll hang tomorrow ok. _

Something reckless inside Matteo is thrilled because he gets to go out into the dark with David, gets to spend time in the syrupy heat that still encases the world, alone - just the two of them. He gets to sit side by side with the person he likes more than anyone else in the world right now. Something else buried deep inside him freezes with the terror that brings. He’s not sure he’s going to be able to just pretend that David is a friend and nothing more. 

As he meets David’s eyes and shows him the messages, he sees an echoing glint of happiness flicker over his face and in his smile. The possibility that it might be happiness to be alone with  _ him _ too sends a frisson through Matteo and he has to drag his eyes away. 

He picks up a light jacket and slings it over his shoulder, rolling his eyes at David’s amused grin.

“Shut up,” he says, shoving David as he feels the heat rising in his cheeks. “It’s a habit, okay?”

David just shakes his head as he leads Matteo out of the room, the easy recognition of the age-old habit Matteo picked up from his mother drowned in the excitement of leaving the house. They escape into the darkness, where Matteo’s burning cheeks can’t be seen and the night is filled with possibility. His body is still bone weary, his limbs uncoordinated and his brain running much slower than usual, sluggishly reacting to stimuli and causing him to stumble a few times on the way down the stairs.

That should worry him, given that he has a very bad habit of blurting out uncomfortably real things when he’s so tired he has no filter left. But a reckless part of him doesn’t care anyway. That part of him wants to say something, thrilling to the way he’s feeling now he’s back on the same soil as David, no longer having to see him through a tiny, grainy screen. That part of him could get him into some very deep trouble if he’s not careful.

It’s silent as they walk, torchlights bobbing as they get further away from the brightly lit parts of the city. They don’t really need the lights, but there’s something about the way they illuminate things in a new way that has always fascinated them. So this has been habit for too many long years to count, shining torches into drains and across old boarded up windows even as streetlights shine above their heads.

There’s no chatter; Matteo’s too tired for that, focused on putting one foot in front of the other and not falling over the myriad small cracks in the pavement. But they haven’t ever needed to talk to know where they’d be going. It’s the one place that’s always drawn them back on heated summer nights when they didn’t want to go home and needed somewhere to just  _ be. _

Soon enough, David is looking up at a chain fence, testing it carefully to make sure it’ll still hold their weight. Matteo groans as he looks up at it. It’s much higher than he remembers, or maybe that’s just the exhaustion speaking. His bones all weigh too much and the thought of trying to haul them all over that fence, twice, doesn’t appeal.

Something must show on his face when David turns at the sound because he immediately drops his fingers away from the links and leans back against it, watching Matteo with a considering, almost unnerving, look in his eye. 

“We don’t have to,” he says. There’s no disappointment in his voice. Indeed, he sounds like he genuinely means it. And yet hot shame spikes along Matteo's spine. He can see the water glistening inside, beckoning him. He wants this, wants to slide into the cool water on this hot night, wants to immerse himself into the darkness and not have to think about anything.

So he shakes his head, takes a breath and steps up to the fence alongside David.

“If you push me up, I can probably do it,” he says. 

Then he laughs, because it’s so reminiscent of other nights here at this very pool. Other summers when they escaped to this, their place of shelter, of comfort, and of secrecy.

_ Mid Summer 2014 _

“Fuck,” Matteo says as he tries to haul himself up onto the top of the fence, but his feet scrabble uselessly, incapable of gaining any sort of purchase on the slippery wire. He fumbles a little, sliding down so he’s dangling at the end of fingers that are slowly but surely losing their hold on the top.

“Here,” Jonas says, holding his hands as a step under Matteo's feet. Flushed with a heat that only has a little to do with embarrassment, Matteo takes the offered help and manages finally to drag himself up and over the top, dropping down on the other side and stumbling as he lands.

David’s eyes are amused as he flicks the torch up and into Matteo's eyes, but he’s kind enough to let it slide and not tease Matteo about his lack of athleticism.

“Race you,” he says instead, shedding his shorts, dropping the torch to the side, and jumping into the water wearing his boxers and a t-shirt.

Laughing, Matteo follows suit, throwing his shorts and a jacket his mother insisted he carry with him to one side. 

“You don’t play fair,” Matteo protests when he surfaces from the initial dive, teeth chattering at the sudden chill of the water against his overheated skin. The t-shirt has floated up, billowing out around him and letting the icy cold water invade, pebbling his skin with too many tiny dots to count.

David just splashes, stretching his arms wide and pushing a huge wave of water over to swamp Matteo, and covering his hair, which plasters to his head in a way he just knows is unattractive. Spluttering, and unwilling to acknowledge why looking unattractive might be an issue for him in this situation, he pushes it out of his eyes and jumps high enough that he can splash down and send a cascade of water back over David.

His laugh rings out in the clear night air, shimmering in a way that’s almost visible between them, and Matteo can’t contain the grin that spreads wide over his own face at the sound. Jonas finally thumps onto their side of the fence, and David immediately turns to send a wash of water at him before he’s able to get into the pool.

Feeling a sense of contentment, Matteo laughs at the affront in Jonas’ eyes, throwing his head back and flopping backwards so he can spread out and lie on the top of the water. He lets himself float, calm in the far end, away from the carnage the others are wreaking on each other as he watches the stars twinkling into existence above him. Their shouts of laughter drift across the soft rippling of the water to him, but Matteo’s managing to hold himself aloof from it.

He has one eye on them, but is mostly lazily unfocused, enjoying being able to retreat into his own little world, one where he isn’t expected to do or be anything. Where it’s just him and the water and the stars shining with some sort of promise in the violet sky above them. Still, he can’t help noticing the way David always twists away from any contact which might expose his belly or lift his shirt up.

Jonas doesn’t seem to have picked up on it, still trying to grab David and drag him under water in retaliation for soaking his only set of clothes. While David laughs, and taunts him about his inability to make any headway, he’s still very careful.  _ Obviously _ careful.

It pains Matteo that even here with just the three of them, who have no secrets between them, that David is so precise with his movements, unwilling to let even them see him. He gets it, understands why, but the situation feels so deeply unfair to him. One day, he thinks as he watches his friends. One day David will be able to be free and comfortable. Matteo is determined to be there when it happens.

He closes his eyes, lets the water take him where it will, bobbing towards the far end of the pool, head gently butting up against the wall before spinning slowly and moving away in a new direction. There’s some sort of peace, of comfort, in drifting like this. Letting someone or something lead him and not having to make any decisions is freeing in a way Matteo doesn’t want to examine. 

The laughter of the others reaches him, but he’s content to let them fight it out alone. He spreads his arms wider and hums his happiness. The evening wears on into deepest night, darkness deepening around him as he lies in the cool water while a hot breeze dances over his chest, at peace with himself and the world.

_ Late Summer 2019 _

David’s looking at him, his eyes dark and intense. His smile tilts the corners of his lips up into something knowing, but he nods then holds his hands the way he always would when they climbed in here.

Something about the quiet stillness of the night makes Matteo’s breath catch in his throat, and he swallows around something thick and hot in his throat at the look in David’s eyes. It’s warm, caring, sharing a sense of adventure and of delight in being here like old times. If he lets himself hope, Matteo feels like there might be some delight in the fact that it’s just the two of them. 

Trying to keep himself together, desperately hoping he’s not going to embarrass himself by asking babbling questions to overcome the way these thoughts are pooling warmth into his belly, Matteo kicks his shoes off and tosses them over the fence before gingerly placing one foot onto David’s hands.

The boost, when it comes, is stronger than he was expecting, and Matteo gasps as his body instinctively reacts to the push, grabbing the top of the fence while his other foot comes up to wedge a toe or two into one of the narrow gaps in the wire, gaining some sort of stability ready for the final haul up to the top.

David’s strong, far stronger than he was before Matteo left, and he’s left gasping for breath as he sits on the top of the fence. Not because it’s cold, or the energy required was too much, but because the feel of those arms boosting him so easily calls his mind back to the shape of David’s muscles under the tautness of the shirt he’s wearing. He can’t let himself think that way, not when he’s so tired all his defences are down and he has no filter.

“Fuck it’s cold,” he calls down to David. A wind has sprung up, cooled in the late evening at the end of summer, and Matteo shivers in the chill of the wind that whips through his clothes at this height. 

“Maybe you need the jacket after all,” David says with a smirk as he holds it up.

Matteo rolls his eyes, but leans down to grab it from David before he, too, climbs up the fence, far more easily than Matteo has ever managed. Matteo watches as his arms flex and move when he pulls himself up to the top.

He grins over at Matteo now that they’re both perched up there. “Not keen to go in the water anymore?” he asks, nodding down towards the pool.

There’s part of Matteo that wants to stay up here, wobbling precariously on the fence side by side with David. It feels something like a metaphor for his life, where he feels like everything is wobbly under him, not strong enough to sustain him, but that he can bear it if David is alongside him.

He flicks his gaze over at David, catching him looking at him with something that looks more than mere curiosity. It’s intense and his lip is sucked in between his teeth. When he catches Matteo’s eyes on him, David flushes, bright even in the dim lighting from the streetlight nearby.

Feeling flustered, as if he’s been caught in some sort of wrongdoing, Matteo shakes his head. He slips forward, twisting so he can keep hold of the strong bar at the top of the fence as he drops down to the other side of the fence. He’s done it so often before that it should be a practiced movement, but he feels awkward tonight, his body not obeying his brain's instructions effectively, and everything seems to be tilting him off his axis. He’d love to pretend that it’s all just because he’s tired, but Matteo knows a large part of it is the way being here with David is making him feel.

He drops, feels his feet stumble a little on the landing, and hears David’s soft chuckle.  _ He _ drops right beside Matteo, a perfect landing that shows off more of the things he’s been working on over the summer. His balance, his agility. Stamina. His body.

Catching Matteo’s eyes on him, David shrugs. “I’m taking a PE Abi,” he says, as if in explanation. “I’ve been working on some stuff for that.”

The tense way he’s holding his body, and in the smallness of his voice, makes Matteo realise he wants Matteo’s approval, that for some reason his opinion matters to David. It’s a startling thought. David, it seems, wants Matteo to know he’s not buffing up for the sake of it, that it has an intent and a purpose. That he’s not, in the words they used to bandy around, a self-absorbed jock. 

Matteo smiles, holds back from some of the things he was about to say, some of the usual teasing banter they’d use. He’s too tired for his brain to fully comprehend anything, but he wonders if all of this - the teasing, the obvious showing off of his new abilities - has been David’s way of trying to impress him. He swallows, tries not to let himself hope.

So instead of a retort, Matteo pushes David, then tries to kick his feet out from under him. He’s too tired for any sort of precision, and so David is able to side step it easily. Still, as he hears David’s burst of laughter, Matteo can’t help the swell of affection in his chest.

Hearing that laugh in real life gives him a thrill, a burst of happiness, that just didn’t translate over the screens they’ve been using to communicate over the bulk of the summer. It’s warm and solid, thrumming through Matteo in a way he hadn’t even quite realised he’d been missing.

_ Early Summer 2019 _

“I’ll come out later,” Matteo calls to his cousins as they yell for him to come outside through the open door. It’s almost the time when David said he’d call, and Matteo can’t wait to see him again. The spotty, patchy wifi of this place doesn’t make it easy, but seeing his friends settles the painful ache in Matteo’s chest the way even the most fun-filled days with his family here don’t quite manage.

The cousins’ disgruntled mumbles just make him grin as he waves a dismissive hand in their direction, and he laughs as they make their thoughts at his defection from their plans plain with a series of crude gestures. He picks up his pace as he makes his way through to his room, unwilling to miss any time with David.

He’s panting a little from exertion as he flops down onto his bed, left unmade this morning despite his nonna’s admonishments about cleanliness and keeping everything in its place. The garden outside his window is filled with sweet smelling plants and flowers, the wind wafting the combination of scents through the open window, and together it’s calm and peaceful. 

Still, Matteo’s heart is beating much faster than usual as he leans his chin on his hands and waits for the phone to light up with the call from home. His eyes try to slide closed while he waits, drifting in the warm air, the sunlight pressing down on his back and his breaths coming slowly. But he keeps one tiny sliver cracked open, watching for the phone screen to light up.

Matteo blinks at an insistent buzz, and David’s face is suddenly filling the tiny screen, lit up in a huge smile and looking relaxed and happy. Matteo's heart lifts. Then Jonas presses in from one side and Carlos and Abdi appear in behind them. Matteo grins, delighted to see them all. They’re dripping wet and their hair is all plastered to their heads. David pushes his back up and off his forehead, shaking his head vigorously to loosen the curls and rid himself of the water.

It’s unconsciously attractive, and Matteo can’t quite stop the thrum that goes through him as he watches. His heart gives an awkward, jumpy lurch as David's fingers tease the hairs back into place once he's finished shaking. To cover, Matteo hums a little in welcome, scrambling to sit up and grabbing the phone to grin at his friends.

“Still pale as shit,” Abdi laughs as the phone tilts a little and obviously shows off Matteo’s chest as well as his face.

He’s about to respond indignantly, when David shoves Abdi who falls to the side, laughing.

“At least he hasn’t gone red,” David says, smirking down at Abdi. “Who spent most of this week crimson?”

“Hey! How was I supposed to know the sunscreen was out of date?”

“That’s what reading is for,” Jonas points out, then winces when Abdi’s hand thumps him from the side.

“Anyway, Luigi,” David says, grabbing the phone and clearly stepping away from the chaos that has erupted around him. To one side, Matteo can see Carlos jumping onto a pile with Abdi at the bottom, and hears Jonas’s loud groan as he does so. But his eyes are mostly on David.

“Anyway what?”

David rolls his eyes at Matteo’s teasing imitation of his voice. “Anyway, what have you been up to?”

Feeling his face fall, Matteo shrugs. He can’t make himself meet David’s eyes even through the screen. The truth is he’s not been doing much at all. Hanging out with his cousins, helping his nonna, enduring somewhat painful evenings with his father’s new family. Under it all, he’s been aching to be home and to spend some time with his friends. 

With David.

“Oh, you know. Swimming mostly. Maybe some cooking.”

On screen, David’s mouth has quirked into a worried frown and he opens his mouth as if to query Matteo’s words.

He’s cut off, though, by Carlos jumping onto his back from behind and dragging his attention away. Internally, Matteo breathes a sigh of relief. He doesn’t want his friends to know how desperately he wants to not be here. 

“David. Bro! There’s ice cream!” Carlos yells over his shoulder as he drops his arm and dashes away from David.

He laughs and turns back towards Matteo

“Guess I’d better go,” David says, his voice low and it seems like there’s a tinge of regret in it. Matteo wishes it meant he wants to talk to Matteo as much as he wants to talk to David. “I’ll call you tonight, okay?” David says.

His eyes are intense, and his gaze flickers over Matteo’s face as if the answer means something important.

“Yeah, of course,” Matteo says. He pulls what is probably a very unconvincing grin onto his face. “If I get back from the lake in time.”

It may be his imagination, but it seems like David’s cheerful smile slips slightly. But it’s so vibrant and bright so quickly that Matteo’s sure he just imagined it.

“Yeah, okay.”

David’s wink and joyful laugh just before he clicks out of the call sits deep in Matteo’s chest and he finds he can’t quite breathe. The longing to be back there with the guys, wrestling over stupid shit and eating half-melted ice cream, is a painful log wedged in his throat.

_ Late Summer 2019 _

Throwing off his shirt, shivering in the breeze that’s still whipping around the edges of the area, Matteo turns and runs towards the pool. It shimmers in the darkness, lit only by one solitary streetlight peering in at them over top of the pool house.

There’s something comforting in the sight, spread out before them the way it has been so many times on so many previous occasions.

Matteo whoops as he jumps up, tucking his hands in around his knees and splashing down into the pool. Beside him, David drops in a second behind him, sending an enormous wave of water over Matteo's head as he resurfaces, and cascading over the edges of the pool.

His laugh rings out again and Matteo’s heart swells at the sound. He’d do almost anything to hear that laugh again. So he jumps up, pushes down on David’s head and makes him splutter as he sucks in a mouthful of water as he goes under for a second.

He pops back up, and grabs at Matteo, clearly intending to try to shove him under as well. But Matteo freezes; his fingers grappling with David’s arms have come into contact with the biceps Carlos had forced him to examine earlier, and he's suddenly not sure how to react. He’d think that his earlier experience might have been enough to get used to the way David’s body has changed, to the way it makes Matteo feel when he notices that. 

It’s not. 

He sucks in a breath, raising his eyes to David’s and flushing when he sees how close they’re standing, water lapping around their waists, clothes plastered to their bodies. David has stilled, too. His eyes, in the deepening gloom, are difficult to read, but Matteo still feels a warm flush heating his body at the thought that there may be some sort of possibility here.

Trying to deflect, to recover from whatever that moment was, he reaches down to flick carefully at David’s t-shirt sleeve. “You’re still wearing these in the pool?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” David says. “It’s warmer that way.”

It’s a fair comment, not the entire truth he’s sure, but Matteo recognises enough in the stilted, stiff smile David's now wearing to know that David doesn’t want to pursue this topic and is offering this deflection. So he shrugs his acquiescence, and smiles.

“Shows off your muscles, you mean,” he says, filling his voice with as much teasing energy as he can. "Trying to bowl over the local population with your body."

David pushes him, rolling his eyes as he protests his innocence. But there’s gratitude in the relief painting lines through his body and whatever strange, tense thing had sprung up between them is lost as the moment stretches.

Matteo lies down, his arms out so he can stay stable on top of the water. He closes his eyes, lets himself drift. Usually when he does this, he feels awkward and ill at ease if anyone is watching. But tonight, maybe it’s the exhaustion, or maybe it’s the fact that it’s just David, but it feels different somehow. Easy. 

“It’s nice here,” he says, turning to look at David, watching as he too falls back and spreads his arms wide. His body, lying on the water with his clothes pressed tight against it, is so lean and honed that Matteo sucks in a breath. It may be the exhaustion, but all he wants is to be allowed to reach out and touch, to trace the way it might feel under his fingers. He curls his hands in on themselves to keep from carrying through on the impulse, knows that would definitely cross some lines.

“What do you mean?” David asks, his voice quiet and almost seeming close to sleep and yet nevertheless enough to startle Matteo out of his reverie. David’s eyes are unfocused when Matteo looks him in the face again; his gaze open but unfixed as he floats looking up at the sky above them. The whole moment is serene, unplagued by any worries about life and the future. Matteo smiles and turns to stare back up at the stars too.

“I missed this,” he admits quietly. “In Italy, the night looks different.”

He means he missed David. He means he wants to admit all his feelings. He means he’s so tired it almost seems like a good idea to do it.

David doesn’t respond, apart from a soft humming affirmation. It’s always been like this. They’ve never really had to talk to understand each other. Not that Matteo thinks David understands all the nuances flowing under his words, but he understands the longing Matteo has been feeling.

“School starts soon,” he mutters eventually. It’s a grudging acknowledgement of the precarious nature of these few days of adventure. 

“Yeah,” David says quietly. There’s an aching, longing tone in his voice that Matteo understands completely. “Last year. The end of school is so close.”

The thought still sends a stab of hot fear and anxiety into Matteo’s chest, but it’s easier here with David. It’s easier with someone who gets him.

“I’m scared,” he admits. 

It's several long seconds before David whispers, "so am I."

Matteo blinks, taken aback that his confident friend, who's always known what he wants to do, has some of the same feelings that Matteo does. 

He reaches out, clasps David's hand in a comforting grip, and sighs.

"Guess we just go through and out the other side then," he says.

"Together," David agrees. 

There's a smile in his voice and he squeezes Matteo's hand without relinquishing his grip. They float like that, joined together but drifting aimlessly, as the night closes in around them. 

Matteo smiles; he doesn't feel quite so lonely or adrift when David is here with him. 


	3. Chapter 3

_ Late Summer, 2019 _

Matteo groans as he opens his eyes, lids sticking together because it’s still far too early to be awake on one of the last few days of summer freedom. He’s not even sure why he’s awake, unless it’s the same restless thing that hasn’t been letting him have any peace since he got on the plane back from Italy. He can feel it in his chest, energy buzzing through him with no real outlet because it’s an energy that has no ending. It’s an energy that is doomed to fizzle and die as soon as school starts again in a few days, and in the meantime it’s unsettled, roaming through various issues Matteo would rather keep pushed down and ignored.

Before he can continue in his rather maudlin line of thought, something thumps Matteo in the shins, and he winces with a soft murmur of pain.

“It wasn’t even that hard,” a voice says, warm amusement in its tone, and Matteo shivers as the events of the night return to him.

Once they’d escaped the pool, he and David had run to Matteo’s home, which was closest, wet clothes flapping around their legs, and the warmth of the evening well and truly lost in the chilled breeze that pursued them. By the time they’d got to his house, the two of them had been shivering.

“I’d better head off, then,” David had said, his lips almost blue in the yellow light spilling out from the buildings around them. He was shuddering, his arms wrapped around his upper body, and he looked miserable.

Matteo hadn’t been able to resist, offering a shower and a change of clothes before he went home. From there, it had taken very little to end up sleeping on the same bed due to exhaustion and a lack of desire to move anywhere.

So that all means he’s here now, in the morning, with David’s warm presence behind him in his bed. Matteo’s too scared to turn around and look at him, because he’s even less sure of his own reactions. The heat of the night is gone, the day hasn’t warmed up yet, and in the coolish air of the early morning, the feelings Matteo’s been trying to repress are more easily held tight to his chest than they had been in the helpless recklessness of the heated evening. 

But Matteo still has enough sense left to know that looking at David would crumble some of that resolve. Seeing him would almost certainly test Matteo’s strength, particularly when he shuffles in the bed behind Matteo and his scent wafts over him, dragging unwilling thoughts from the previous evening back into his head.

And the one thing he’s figured out after sleeping is that telling David how he’s feeling would be the stupidest idea he’s ever had. It had hovered on his tongue a few times last night, but Matteo had somehow managed to resist all his more reckless impulses and keep it to himself.

Here in the early morning, awake and with exhaustion gone, his filter is back, and he’s immensely thankful that he  _ had _ kept those thoughts close to his chest. After so many years of holding back from admitting any feelings it’s second nature by now, and while it’s been painful keeping it secret even from himself at times, there’s been a certain peace in keeping his own counsel.

Before he can make any sort of decision, there’s an annoying buzzing clatter from the floor and David groans. Matteo can feel the bed dipping and moving behind him, and hear the rustle of bedclothes as David moves to lean and grab his phone from where it has slipped onto the floor.

“Fuck,” he mutters once he’s safely back onto the bed, and Matteo can’t avoid turning to look at him now.

“Hmmmm?” he asks, turning over and trying to act just as normal as he always does when one of his friends sleeps over.

David doesn’t seem to notice anything off with the way Matteo is acting, growling as he is at his phone. Matteo kicks him to draw his attention, and to restore normality to the situation. It works, and David kicks back, a smile slipping onto his face as he tilts his phone to show Matteo.

_ Lake party, _ the text reads.  _ To welcome Luigi home. Be there in 30 _

Matteo groans, making David grin. “Can I just … act like I never saw it?” Matteo asks, knowing his voice is whiny but not caring all that much.

“You probably got one too,” David points out, tapping Matteo on the forehead. 

When he manages to scrabble his own phone out of the pocket of his shorts, Matteo does indeed have the same series of messages. He reluctantly sends back a thumbs up, unwilling to shit on Jonas and his plans just because Matteo isn’t feeling all that social. He resigns himself to getting up, going out, and seeing far too many people. All he really wants to do is something just with him, David and Jonas. Not everyone, the way he knows this party is going to be.

Still.

He’d spent so long aching to see everyone while he was away, so there’s a large part of him that’s excited. These parties never last the whole day, after all, he reasons. And he knows that, however apathetic he is to the idea right now, he’ll enjoy the day and the time spent with his crew. All of them. Jonas and David, of course, and the boys. But the others too. Hanna and Amira. Mia and Kiki, and all the others who always gathered when they had these parties. All the people he’s been missing so fiercely while he was away.

He looks back over at David, watches the way he lies so unconscious of how gorgeous he is, running his fingers absentmindedly through his hair, lips pursed as he reads something he’s clearly finding amusing, skin glowing in the early morning light, and his damn muscled arm stretched high, hanging on to the pillow behind his head, and showing off every taut line under Matteo’s loaned t-shirt which is hanging low enough to  _ just _ cover his waist, skimming the top of his boxers. For one brief second Matteo holds his breath as he wonders if David moves enough if he might get a glimpse of skin... 

He blinks and pulls his eyes away. Maybe it’s best that he’s not going to be alone with David again so soon. He feels like he must be giving himself away with every moment, the way he can never drag his eyes away from David, the way his thoughts keep tending to linger over the what ifs. 

David looks up, and his smile widens when he catches Matteo’s eyes on him. He looks pleased, a slight hint of colour creeping into his cheeks as he nods towards Matteo's phone.

“Guess we should go,” he says. “Jonas won’t let us hear the last of it if we’re late.”

Matteo shrugs. “I’m always late.”

Laughing, David pushes against his back, in an attempt to get him to move from the bed. “Yes, and that’s  _ why _ he won’t let us hear the last of it.”

_ Mid Summer, 2016 _

“Try to keep up!” David shouts back over his shoulder as he zips ahead on his bike. Matteo curses under his breath, still trying to stabilise his enough to get on it. 

By the time he’s on and pumping his legs to try to catch up, David is a long way ahead, his head thrown back and his joyful, exuberant laughter spilling back to Matteo. The weird, awkward feelings Matteo had always associated with hearing delighted male laughter flood over him at the sound and he does his best to push it away. Tries to focus on the moment.

“Do you know where we’re going?” he calls instead of letting himself react. “Jonas is waiting.”

“Kind of,” David yells back, his efforts at keeping ahead of Matteo redoubling as Matteo manages to almost catch him. David pulls ahead, and sends a cheeky laugh back over his shoulder again.

Matteo huffs his irritation, but has to focus on the cycling. He’s already out of breath and knows if he tries to catch up more David will just dart further ahead and Matteo will just end up with aching legs and a racing heart. So he keeps a steady pace and lets David enjoy his occasional taunts back at him.

They cycle like that for several more miles, until David slows down, lets his feet drop and brings them both to a halt. He eyes the narrow street ahead of them with a tilted head and a small frown.

“This doesn’t seem right,” he mutters, and Matteo rolls his eyes.

“You know where we’re going, huh?” he teases.

“I only said ‘kind of’ so… I’m not wrong.”

Matteo drops off the bike, letting it flop against a nearby wall, and leans against it himself. His lungs are scratchy with their attempts to suck in air, and he’s grateful for the pause in the exercise despite his rising anxiety about getting to Jonas’s party before they look totally rude.

“You could use your phone to look,” he points out. “Then we might actually find our way.”

“It’s around here somewhere,” David says, nodding in the direction they’d been moving and ignoring Matteo’s suggestion. He’s always been this way, trying to act like he knows what he’s doing, brazening it out until things shake out roughly how he’d wanted them to. Matteo’s used to it by now, so he just nods, leans his own head back against the wall and recovers his breath. They’ll be cycling frantically again soon enough, so it’s best to use this time to gain back some energy.

David’s running his fingers through his hair and making it stand up in a way that really shows just how irritated he is with himself even while he’s trying to hide it. It’s days like this when Matteo can’t resist trying to get him to react. 

“We could have saved all this trouble if we hadn’t decided to go to that building first,” Matteo says, “I’m telling Jonas that we’re late this time because of you.”

David glares at him, and growls. It’s hilarious, and Matteo breaks down in giggles at the affronted face David pulls. He hasn’t felt this free and wild in his laughter for a very long time, and somehow that translates to David, who also ends up in a fit of helpless laughter despite obviously being so annoyed at the situation.

“Jonas will never believe you,” David says once he’s managed to stop giggling. “It’s always your fault we’re late. Anyway, it’s over this way.”

He’s away on his bike again, so fast that Matteo barely has time to react before he’s calling something taunting over his shoulder about how slow Matteo is.

He gives him the finger as he pushes off on his own bike and the slog begins again. David’s speed, and the taunts he flings behind him at various moments, are almost certainly Matteo’s punishment for finding his irritation amusing, but Matteo doesn’t care. He feels a lot happier. More free. As if the sheer act of laughing has banished all the fears and anxieties away and left just the strong feelings of contentment behind.

They’re late already, far too late to cover with any sort of good excuse. So there’s no use in worrying. Jonas will laugh at them, he’ll definitely tease Matteo for being the one who caused the issues, and everything will be fine.

And before then, there’s David. His body flying ahead on his bike is filled with promise, with adventure and with a heady sense of shared mischief making.

The day is warm, the party will still be there when they arrive, and a little bit of teasing isn’t going to hurt. Watching David as he flies around a corner ahead, Matteo thinks it’s all worth it. To be here with a best friend, sharing in all the good and bad a day can bring, well… there’s not much that’s better than that.

_ Late Summer, 2019 _

They’re not late this time, but they cut it very fine. Matteo rolls his eyes when Jonas gives him the look he always saves for when Matteo has done something irritating.

“Shut up! You didn’t exactly give much time.”

“True,” Jonas says, dragging him in for the complex greeting they always use, bumping fists then elbows. “You’re still late though.”

_ “Almost _ late,” Matteo protests. “There’s hardly anyone here.”

Jonas smirks, and Matteo knows he’s not going to get away with that one. Matteo’s not even late, scraping in just under the thirty minutes he was given, so this is hardly a fair teasing. He doesn’t mind, though. It feels good. It feels like home. For the first time since he left for Italy, he feels like he can breathe properly again. Like this is what he needs, this is where he belongs.

David reaches around from behind him to echo the greeting with Jonas. His face is lit up and he’s grinning, his voice loud and warm in Matteo’s ear as he laughs off Matteo’s supposed lateness. Growling as he pushes against David who knows he’s not even late, Matteo feels the blossoming of happiness in his chest. He pushes away all the fears about the future in the joy of feeling like this is home, where he belongs with the people he belongs to. For this one shimmering day he can pretend summer still stretches before them.

The sun is bright in the sky and people are trickling into the small park area near the lake that Jonas had decreed for their party. Despite the party being ostensibly about him, Matteo drifts off to the side, leans against a tree and watches everyone with a small smile on his face.

The warmth from the sun presses into his body, soaking him in a pleasant bone-deep lethargy. If it was up to him he’d stay here indefinitely, following his friends’ movements with pleasure but with no desperation to be in the mix. Now he’s back from Italy, the aching desire to be with everyone has dissipated into this more comfortable happiness. He’s enjoying being near to it all, but not in the thick of it. Unfortunately, it seems it’s not up to him.

Shadows loom, cutting off the warmth and making him blink upwards with a confused scowl. 

Carlos and Kiki. He should have known.

“Hey!” Kiki says brightly as she plops down onto a blanket Carlos has hastily laid out on the ground next to Matteo. “Carlos says Italy was good.”

She says it like a pronouncement and Matteo winces. He doesn’t really want to do the ‘Italy’ small talk with everyone, but knows he’s doomed to repeat this conversation several times. “It was fine,” he says eventually, mustering as convincing a smile as he can. “Hot. You know.”

She nods as if she cares, but there’s something brittle hovering in the corners of her eyes that makes him wonder what’s happening behind her steadfast gaze and poised manner. Carlos seems to pick on something too; he slides in behind her, rubbing his hands on her arms. She looks back over her shoulder at him and her face lights up, whatever had been hiding in her eyes gone as she greets him with a small kiss even though they haven’t even been apart.

“You guys are gross,” Matteo says casually, his voice languorous as he leans his head back against the tree and basks in the sun that has reappeared now that the other two have sat down.

Carlos laughs, pulls Kiki in for another kiss. “As if you’re any different,” he says when he finally lets her go and looks back at Matteo..

Matteo squints at him, all easiness gone. His heart is thumping and an icy river runs through his veins. “I don’t even have anyone,” he points out, trying to keep his voice neutral and his body language casual. It’s close to impossible with the way he’s freezing up. “There’s no-one to be gross  _ with,” _ he adds.

Carlos smirks at him, while Kiki laughs. They share a look which suggests that they have already had this conversation, and more than once. It startles Matteo, that he’s been observed this shrewdly by people he’s never really thought would notice him or how he’s feeling. He feels exposed. Open.

“If you want to be like that about it,” Kiki says with an eventual shrug after observing him for a long moment. “But it’s not exactly… well.” She brushes some grass off her hands and smiles at Matteo. “It’s not subtle, is all we’re saying.”

Panicked, Matteo opens his mouth to retort, to push back. He wants to deny, to try to convince them that they’re wrong. But another shadow looms over them all, and Jonas is suddenly there, grinning and holding his hand out.

“Hiding, Luigi?” he says, grasping Matteo’s hand and tugging on it. “This is your party. You have to come and hang out with the cool people.”

“Hey!!” Carlos cries out, in amused protest, but he’s wrapping his arms around Kiki and the look on her face when she leans back into him is enough to let Matteo know that they, at least, aren’t going to be joining everyone else anytime soon.

He groans. “Save me” he grumbles to Carlos as Jonas finally manages to get him to his feet and turns to pull him away in the direction of the rest of the crowd.

They laugh at his exaggerated unwillingness to follow Jonas, and he plays up his reluctance, looking over his shoulder with overacted pouts and groans.

But inside he’s grateful. That conversation was too tough, too difficult, too confronting. Matteo’s not ready to face up to the knowledge that he hasn’t been hiding anything as well as he’d thought. It sends an army troop’s worth of sickness down to set up camp in his belly, but he pulls on what must be a creditible enough facade of happiness as they reach the others and they all start hugging him. Jonas certainly doesn’t seem to notice anything amiss.

Matteo catches sight of David over Hanna’s shoulder as she wraps him up in one of her warm embraces, and it makes something flip over inside Matteo’s chest watching as he laughs, wrapping his arms around her in return. The sight of him so happy and at ease warms Matteo, but the sick feeling remains. Dragging his eyes away, Matteo resolves to be a little less obvious. 

It’s one thing if David might have guessed. With him, there’s something. With him, there’s a certain promise, a freedom, a joy in being known. It’s quite another thing for everyone else to have picked up on it too. With them, there’s no freedom. With them, the idea of being seen and known feels like a trap. A cage.

_ Mid Summer, 2019 _

“Shut up! It’s not like you’re doing any better,” David is saying, a smile in his voice and his face half-tilted out of the frame on his phone as he bends sideways to try to grab something. 

They’ve been talking for almost an hour now, and they’re both slumped on their beds, phones held above faces and occasionally wavering to thud down onto noses when arms protest at being held so rigidly for so long. Matteo’s had a more intimate look at the inside of David’s nose than he’s ever wanted to, but even he’s ready to admit that he’s far enough gone that he’s finding the occasionally looming view of those nostrils to be a little charming.

He laughs at David's obvious annoyance. “I got mine already,” he says with triumph in his voice as he holds up the small piece of paper he’d been fishing for. “I’m just better than you, face it.”

David scowls, the one eye in shot giving Matteo a malevolent glare, and the phone tilts again until all it shows is a wide crack in the plaster near the ceiling as David mutters a few curses while he reaches for his own prize.

Matteo takes the moment to look at the picture on the paper with a soft smile. David had sent it to him last week, making sure it arrived in the middle of a week Matteo had told him he wasn’t looking forward to: staying with his father and his new family in their over-large house with over-precise decorations everywhere.

It’s a hand drawn two panel comic. In the first panel, a tiny David and a tiny Jonas are peering over the edge of the frame down at a tiny Matteo who’s scowling around at his surroundings. That Matteo is on a couch surrounded by looming figures, all silhouettes and all towering over him. The little Jonas and David are both lit up with excitement and the tiny David is gesturing to the tiny Jonas. In the second panel, the tiny Jonas is letting a rope down to the tiny Matteo. It’s knotted in a way that’s clearly intended to be used as an escape route out of the situation. 

There are a few helpful comments written in David’s most precise handwriting, pointing out various features. Like ‘Luigi sitting with his family’ with an arrow pointing at tiny Matteo. Or ‘this is a ladder, you can climb it’ pointing to the rope. That one has an added parenthesis which says, ‘or maybe Luigi can’t.’

Matteo rolls his eyes every time he reads it, but he’s inordinately fond of it. It’s the first thing David has ever drawn just for him, and the fact that it’s a clear offer of escape towards himself and Jonas, even virtually, makes something hot and heavy flush across Matteo’s body.

“Jesus,” David complains, drawing Matteo's attention back towards his phone as he waves the paper he has been scrabbling for in front of the phone’s screen. “That was way harder than it should have been.”

“Wow,” Matteo grins. “That took forever. You need to train more for that PE Abi, I think.”

Flushing, a charming bright red splashing up into his cheeks, David splutters out some sort of retort. But Matteo fails to pay too much attention. He’s too caught up in the way seeing David's face all vulnerable and open like this makes him feel. He can’t take his eyes off the lips as they move, or draw his attention away from the slope of his cheeks or the glint of the piercing he wears.

“All I can say, Luigi,” David says, dragging Matteo’s thoughts back to his face and the paper that half obscures it, “is that my comic is clearly superior to this.” He waves the paper in emphasis. 

Laughing, even though a shaft of pain stabs through him at the casual dismissal of the words, Matteo shakes his head. 

“Never!” he declares. “Look at the proportions of these heads to these bodies.” He flaps his comic in mimicry of David, and grins at the finger he receives in return. “My memes, by contrast, are a carefully selected masterpiece.”

He happens to look up at that moment and catches an expression on David’s face that makes his heart beat faster and his palms become sweaty. It’s so  _ fond, _ so soft and amused. 

Once he realises Matteo has noticed, David grins, the expression slipping away. But it was there and it made Matteo hope things. 

“Your memes certainly are  _ something.” _

There’s an attempt at disdain or dismissal in David’s voice. But that expression, the soft fond one, flits over his face again when he glances down at the paper with the memes. The fact that he’s printed them, that he holds a physical copy of something Matteo made for him, is unusual enough that Matteo does let himself wonder. The times they’ve spent talking to each other this summer have been such highlights for Matteo. But it’s times like this that he wonders if they’ve been the same for David too.

The memes  _ were  _ all carefully selected, after all. Matteo had spent more hours than he cares to admit scouring the net to find the ones that spoke to him of David. Of his friendship. Of everything he means to Matteo. 

David looks up at the screen again, biting his lip and with something intense sitting behind his eyes. There’s  _ something _ there, and Matteo thinks he could maybe say it. He thinks that the things that have been building and brewing all summer might be easier said while he’s here so many miles away from David.

He opens his mouth, stutters out a quiet, “...um,” and braces for David’s laughing mockery of his hesitation. He can deal with that, expects it even. Because that’s all normal, and if things are normal that might make it all easier anyway. But just as he hears David’s bright, vibrant laugh, his door rattles.

Heart beating fast, with displaced nerves, and fright at the sudden interruption, Matteo sits up and looks in the direction of the rattle.

“Nonna,” he breathes when he sees who it is.

She shakes her head when she sees him with his phone. Her eyes are dancing, but her mouth draws into an exaggerated disapproving line as she enters and comes over to the bed. “You spend too much time on that thing,” she says in stern Italian, and Matteo grins at her. It’s a long standing tug of war between them.

“I know, I know, Nonna. My eyes will fall out and I’ll turn into a slug.”

“I’m right, and you’ll thank me when you’re sixty,” she says, with a small laugh. When he just shrugs his shoulders, she pats his arm and gestures towards the door. “It’s dinner time. So you have to put it down.”

There’s a note of triumph in her voice, and Matteo rolls his eyes fondly as she exits with one last admonishment to clean up and come to the table. He looks back down at the phone only to catch David giggling.

“I have no idea what she said,” David says, chuckling. “But the look on your face…”

“I have to go eat,” Matteo says reluctantly. Now that the moment has been interrupted, he doesn’t have the courage to continue with his thoughts. David’s lost his intensity, his face relaxed and his usual laughter sitting behind his eyes. He waves Matteo off.

“Yeah yeah. I know you’re just sick of me,” he says, contorting his face into a parody of sadness. “Or grumpy because my comic is definitely the best gift.”

Rolling his eyes at David’s laughter at his own joke, Matteo clicks out of the call. He wishes he’d had the courage to return to the moment, to confess the things he’s been thinking. But, he comforts himself as he makes his way out to dinner, there’s still time. Summer isn’t over yet. And he really should figure out how much is real and how much is born of being separated and so far away from everyone.

_ Late Summer, 2019 _

The party’s finally winding down when Matteo lets himself relax with David. He’s been too aware of the things that Kiki and Carlos had been insinuating to be comfortable spending too much time with him. Not considering how much of the little time he’s had in Germany he’s already spent with just David.

But now… now almost everyone has gone. The only ones who remain are Jonas, Hanna, David, Amira and Abdi. They’re all sitting on the edge of the lake, close enough to get their feet wet if they stretched their legs out to their fullest. The water laps peacefully by their feet, disturbed perhaps by the other people in the water nearby. It’s mid afternoon, the sun is still high in the sky, and Matteo is feeling peaceful enough to sleep.

He lies back on the pebbled stones of the shore and flings one arm up over his head.

“No stamina, Luigi?”

It’s David’s voice, soft and warm, and it makes Matteo’s toes curl with  _ want. _ Somehow, since Kiki and Carlos had made their insinuations, it’s all become much more real. That because they noticed and were able to see right through the mask he’s been so desperately trying to keep in place, that it means Matteo hasn’t been dreaming it all.

It means… maybe David really is feeling things back.

Matteo’s not quite ready to let himself examine that thought in too much detail, so he just turns his head and squints against the sun until he can see David’s face. He’s grinning, standing over Matteo, but somehow his shadow isn’t cutting out the sun. It’s moved, Matteo realises, playing its light over David’s face and casting his shadow back towards the lake.

“Fuck you,” he manages to get out. “I was up late last night.”

Jonas laughs then, pushes Matteo in the ribs. “So was he.” He nods at David. “And you don’t see him lying around like this.”

“I had a long flight?” Matteo tries, attempting to keep a smile off his own face at this teasing.

David shakes his head. “Nope. It wasn’t that long.” He looks down at Matteo, a pensive look on his face, then reaches his hand down towards him, in a clear indication that he wants him on his feet.

“Good plan!” Jonas says, jumping to his feet and offering his hand to Hanna the same way David is to Matteo. The intimacy in the gesture when the other two do it, the look Hanna gives Jonas when she accepts the hand, makes something hot flip over in Matteo’s chest. Does it look the same way when David does it to him?

He swallows, accepts the offer and is hauled to his feet, almost toppling at the force of the pull. He stumbles, falls forward and into David’s chest. Which… isn’t helping his state of mind. It’s firm under the fingers he’s reached out to stop his fall. Warm, and the heartbeat that he can feel under his fingertips is steady and solid.

Flushing, Matteo takes a step back, avoiding David’s eyes. Instead he turns and runs to the water, following the others who are already splashing each other, the droplets mirroring the light as the sun burns down on them.

He hears a whoop behind him as David races past him and flings himself into the water, too. It’s another of those moments which shimmer in the air, moments caught in time. The last day before they have to start thinking about the new year of school.

This is the last day before everything starts to pile in behind them. A wash of water swamps Matteo, and he shakes off the thought of school along with the water and a huge shout of outrage. It’s not time yet, he reminds himself savagely. He’s never going to enjoy this last adventure of summer if he keeps letting the future intrude.

It’s good advice for both his problems. He can’t do anything about the way he feels about David right now. He can’t do anything about figuring out his future right now. So it’s better by far to immerse himself in the moment. It’s better to ignore all of that stuff and keep enjoying this last weekend on the edge of summer.


	4. Chapter 4

_ Late Summer 2019 _

“Keep up, you assholes,” Jonas calls back over his shoulder as he disappears in the developing darkness that surrounds them on the edges of the park they’ve decided to wander into. It’s late in the evening, the party is well over by now and yet the three of them have been reluctant to return home. Going home is too much like admitting that the day, and therefore the summer, is over.

It’s a small relief to Matteo that the others seem to share his reluctance. David, who’s usually so excited to start the school year, is complicit in extending the time they share tonight, suggesting a new excursion every time they seem to be coming to a natural ending for the day.

“Fuck you,” David yells back, but his pace doesn’t increase, remains steady beside Matteo.  _ He’s _ exhausted, enough to be grateful for the silent, supportive presence by his side.

They hear a whoop from up ahead, then a scuffle in the shrubbery lining the pathway they’re on. David laughs as he sees Jonas’s form emerging from the dense bush. He prods Matteo in the ribs with his elbow.

“What’s he found this time, do you think?” he leans in to whisper to Matteo. It’s heady, in the almost-soporific state Matteo is in and all he can manage is a low chuckle and a shrug of his shoulders.

David grins, tucks his hands deep into his pockets and relapses into silence as they walk. David’s eyes, Matteo notices, drift his way more than once, and there’s a tiny smile playing around the corners of his lips. 

The heat’s intense again, the burn of the afternoon lingering into the evening. What was bearable when the sun was high is now almost liquid and Matteo feels the drag as he tries to suck air into his lungs. He’s sure it should be cooler by this point in the summer. It doesn’t seem fair that they have to return to school while it’s still like this. The lingering heat just another reminder that they’re going to be trapped inside far too soon.

His steps slow with the heat, or his exhaustion, and he stumbles a little as Jonas lopes into sight again waving something above his head. This time they aren’t carrying their usual torches, so Jonas is hard to make out until he’s looming right over them several seconds later. He’s holding a large stick aloft, brandishing it like it’s a sword. Laughing, David darts into the bushes as well and emerges a few seconds later with a stick of his own, smaller but more easily brandished.

“Come on, Luigi,” Jonas cajoles. “Winner gets to decide what we do next.”

“Sleep,” Matteo mutters, stumbling again, this time enough to send him bumbling into Jonas’s path, knocking him off his course with an accidental shove of the shoulder as his outstretched arm flings out and makes contact with Jonas’s chest..

“You don’t need to throw yourself at me,” Jonas laughs. “I already love you.”

His cheeks heated, and with a surreptitious glance towards David, Matteo rolls his eyes. “You wish,” he says as mildly as he can, though his heart is hammering at the suggestion; he may not want to throw himself at Jonas, but it’s not all  _ that  _ distant from what he might want to do with the other member of their adventure. “You couldn’t handle all this perfection.”

He pretends to flip his hair off his face, and poses as if he’s a model. David has stilled, watching them, his eyes fixed on Matteo and his expression unreadable. Matteo’s still trying to work out what it means, when Jonas pushes him off balance again.

“What perfection?” Jonas scoffs. “Those clothes are not exactly the height of sophistication. And what’s with the hair?”

Jonas reaches out as if to touch Matteo’s hair, who growls and ducks away. It brings him closer to David, who takes the opportunity to slip in under his guard and reaches out to ruffle the hair. Matteo howls in faked outrage, trying to fend him off with ineffectual brushes of his hands at David’s where they’re still planted in his hair.

Unfortunately, that brings his fingers into contact with David’s arm muscles again. He sucks in a breath, trying to maintain his composure. He’d forgotten for a brief moment what the summer has done to David’s body, and it’s with a startled, giddy realisation that Matteo notices that David is looking at him. His eyes are dark in the low light, and his lip is sucked in between his teeth. His gaze flickers over Matteo’s face, the planes of David's face softening as he watches. 

David’s fingers push up through the hair to gently brush some stray strands off Matteo’s face, a breathtaking juxtaposition with the earlier laughter-inducing ruffling. Matteo feels his breath stutter in his throat at the touch.

“It’s got blonder,” David says softly. “In Italy.”

Matteo blinks. He’s far too tired for this, he realises. Things are as difficult as they were last night when every filter was gone and all his impulses screamed at him to just say something. He opens his mouth to say it, to blurt it all out, but shuts it again as David’s fingers slip out of his hair, seeming to brush slightly over his ear as his hand falls away.

All breath is sucked out of Matteo’s chest, the damp heat seems to intensify as his entire body flushes with the contact. It’s becoming clear that none of the things he’s been feeling and none of the things he’s wondering about is in his imagination. David’s behaviour is not that of someone who wants to remain just as friends.

Jonas, who appears to have remained entirely oblivious, howls beside them, and the end of his stick clatters to hit the ground. The sound shocks Matteo out of the moment so he drags his eyes away from David’s gaze, and reluctantly looks over towards Jonas. His eyes are lit up in a challenge and his glance flickers to the stick David has been ignoring.

Matteo’s suddenly overwhelmed with tiredness, and his shoulders slump. The others are now play fighting, sticks rattling against each other as laughter spills out into the night. It’s entirely too hot and too energy-sapping for Matteo to want to join them. So he flops down and flings his arms high behind his head. It pulls his shirt up and exposes the skin to the air. While it’s still too hot, the sheen of sweat is cooling when the soft breeze blows over it.

He sighs, watches the others. Their movements are fluid, practised and it hits Matteo again that they’ve had the time together over the summer while he’s been shut out. It should bother him, and yet it doesn’t. They’re beautiful, their bodies strong in the low light. Watching them, Matteo wonders when it happened that David became so important to him. He wonders when exactly it was that he stopped hopelessly pining over Jonas and instead turned his attention to David.

_ Mid summer 2018 _

They’re tucked up inside for once. While it’s still stifling hot, it’s pouring with rain and none of them is willing to venture out into it. So instead, they’re enduring the sticky heat of Jonas’ bedroom. The TV is on, Mario idling in the background waiting for a game to start. But none of them is paying attention anymore, controllers chucked haphazardly on the floor.

David is lying back on the bed, arms in behind his head, and he’s staring at the ceiling with a small, pensive smile on his face.

Jonas nudges him in the ribs, making him yelp in pain. “Penny for them?” Jonas asks, with no hint of remorse.

David rolls his eyes, scooting away from Jonas and his still-questing foot. “I’m thinking about doing PE for Abi,” he says. “As well as the stuff I’m really interested in, I mean.”

Matteo startles. For as long as he’s known David, he’s been athletic, yes. But he’s also been reluctant to call attention to his body, preferring to hide as much as he can and keep away from anything that might highlight it. That’s always made sense to Matteo, who’s never been all that excited about showing off either. Their shared love of baggy and shapeless clothes to hide whatever imperfections their bodies might hold has always been something that he’s felt connected them, something that says he’s not so weird to want to stay hidden and unknowable. Doing PE for his Abi seems to run against all of that.

He twists so he can peer up and over the edge of the bed from where he’s leaning and see David’s face. 

“PE? Seriously?” Jonas says at the same time. Matteo can tell that he’s having the same feelings, and is just as confused as Matteo.

“Yeah, why not?” David says with a shrug. He bends so he can look down into Matteo’s face. “I’m good at it, so why not?”

“Fair enough,” Matteo says, turning back so he can lean on the side of the bed once more. There was something in that look that confuses him more even than the idea of someone wanting to do PE for Abi. Of  _ David _ wanting to do it. 

It’s not like he hasn’t worked out some things about himself, Matteo thinks as he picks up a controller to try to pretend an interest in the discarded game. He knows, intellectually, that he prefers boys to girls in pretty much every way there is. It’s never been an issue because Matteo has never been all that interested in joining the mating dances everyone else seems to want to be involved in.

He’d been a little… well, a little disappointed when Jonas had started showing interest in Hanna. He’d never even really known he’d been harbouring feelings for one of his best friends until the reality hit him in the face that Jonas was never going to return them.

It hadn’t stung much or for very long, though. Matteo and David have definitely been spending more time together since Jonas has been otherwise occupied. But that’s been good. Nice. Instead of the three of them always being such a tight group, it’s now Matteo and David on centre stage, with Jonas giving very welcome guest appearances when he can make it.

If Matteo had ever thought about it, he’d probably have expected that he’d have felt worse about it all than he did. But with David there, and Jonas around a reasonable amount, it just hadn’t hit him that hard. Part of him knows that it’s probably because it was a first crush, the safe harbour of a friend, and that there was never anything real or genuinely lasting about any of it.

But this… this is something else. That David had looked to Matteo for approval and confirmation about his Abi plans isn’t exactly a shock. It’s been the two of them more often than the three of them for what feels like so long now that it’s natural that they gravitate to each other, that their instinct is to look to each other.

No, that part all makes sense. What doesn’t make any sense is the way Matteo’s heart is suddenly thundering in his chest, how his palms are sweating in a way that he can’t quite pass off as resulting from the heat of the day. The fact that David’s attention was on him isn’t unusual, but there was something in that look that lodged under Matteo's ribs and made him ache in a way he’s not certain how to parse.

“Fair enough?” David asks, pushing against Matteo’s head with the ends of his toes, bumping him out of his thoughts. “You’re not going to roast me for this?”

Matteo shrugs, flushing again from the heat of that foot. “Nah,” he says, keeping his eyes on the TV and the game. “You  _ are _ good at it. So you should go for it.”

Blinking, David lies down again. There’s a smile hovering on his lips when Matteo glances back at him, and he can see in the way he’s holding himself that he’s pleased.

“Yeah,” David says. “Could be a bit of fun.”

Jonas snorts, and the moment is lost. “Sounds fucking awful to me,” Jonas says. “But David’s weird enough to enjoy that sort of thing.”

Amidst the howls of outrage at that descriptor, and the resulting wrestling match that dumps the two of them on top of Matteo forcing him to join in, the confusion over whatever David’s attention had meant dissipates. Matteo just enjoys the time with his friends, resolving not to worry about any of that stuff. 

The reminder of Abi and everything that comes with it seeps into his consciousness enough to drive all the other things away. For now at least. He knows the time is coming closer when he needs to face up to his own imminent choices about school and his future. There’s no need to add more complications to all that.

_ Late Summer, 2019 _

Despite his exhaustion, Matteo is happy here. Leaning with his back against a cool tiled wall, David sitting close by, he finds himself content. Drifting into and out of a lethargic, soporific state, sure. But it’s pleasant. No one is talking, the heat has slowly lessened so it’s now finally a bearable warmth skimming over his skin and enhancing the drifting sensation.

He closes his eyes, tilts his head until he can feel the wall solid behind him. Shuffling beside him alerts Matteo to a change in David’s position and he squints sideways trying to make him out in the gloom. Because that’s another thing here: it’s dark. They have no light with them, save for their phones, and in this old building that’s been abandoned for so many years, there’s no helpful beams from nearby streetlights and no way to turn any on inside. The only dim promise is from the moon, which glints through high-up windows if Matteo tilts his head just right.

“What is this place?” he asks, quietly, as if there’s something special and sacred about this old building that needs to be respected.

“Old pool,” David says, his voice loud in the still night and echoing off the walls around them,clearly feeling none of the same compunction Matteo is. Matteo winces, hopes no stray guard will find them this time.

“Old pool?” he asks, dropping his voice even further in hopes of encouraging David to follow his example.

“Yeah,” David says cheerfully, ignoring Matteo’s attempt at quieting him. “It’s an old military base. I’ve seen pictures but I always wanted to come here.”

Matteo pulls out his phone, wants to see it for himself, to figure out why it might appeal to David. The strong beam from his torch bounces off walls that are a faded and peeling teal, highlighting the lane dividers that still hang eerily above their heads, casting long, wonky shadows, and rippling in the moving torchlight as if they are actually sitting deep under water. In illusion, Matteo can almost feel the weight of it pressing in on him.

It doesn’t possess the dilapidated but still stately beauty of the first building they went into so many years ago. But there is something about it that Matteo can see would appeal to someone like David. It’s the perfect place to retreat into, to lock the world out. Unlike the soaring grandeur of the other building, this one feels like it lives up to its utilitarian past. It’s a place to go just to be, to know yourself rather than be seen by others. It’s not pretending to be anything other than what it is.

“I like it,” he says.

He glances sideways, flicking his torch over in David’s direction whether to startle him with the sudden light or to see him better, Matteo’s not sure. His impulses around David are always such an odd mix of playful teasing and a need for approval. To his relief, David is smiling, one hand held up enough to keep the bright light out of his eyes.

“I like it too.”

“It feels like somewhere you can be yourself,” Matteo says, trying to verbalise everything he’d been thinking. “Underwater, but not drowning.”

“Mmmmm,” David says, humming. He stands, reaches up and pulls on one of the lane dividers. It twangs in the quiet of the night, the squeaking of the foam setting Matteo’s teeth on edge. “Somewhere you can swim without care.”

“Where you’re free,” Matteo agrees.

He stuffs his phone back into his pocket, standing to follow David's lead, jumping up to grab hold of the divider above his head. He’s still tired, so his balance is off. When he settles back to the ground, he stumbles, pushed sideways by the force of his landing, footsteps echoing loudly in the wide open space.

“Classy,” David says, and his voice is close. Almost too close. 

Blinking, trying to reorient himself, Matteo coughs. He’s finding it difficult to focus on whatever they’re supposed to be talking about. A wild, reckless part of him takes over. David’s right there, his fingers steadying Matteo with a light pressure on his arm, just above his wrist. Matteo can feel the pulse hammering a staccato beat under their touch. 

“I’m always classy,” he says, hears the weird hitch his voice makes as David's fingers drop away, trying to make his face out in the now-dimmed room. Without the torch he’s back to relying on the inconsistent light of the moon, and David’s face is just a dark blank shape in the darkness.

“Do you ever wonder…” Matteo starts, then trails off. He wants to say it, wants to just get all the wondering over and done with. But in the moment it’s hard to bring himself to say it, even in his reckless, unfiltered exhaustion. There’s too much pressure coming in behind the words, too much fear about what will happen to the various friendships he’s forged over the last few years.

_ Late summer 2019, Italy. _

“Yo Luigi, you have enough stuff there?” Carlos’s voice is warm, the mockery easy and effortless. “That looks like you’re bringing the entirety of the country back with you.”

Matteo snorts. “So I’m bringing a few things for the people I care about,” he says. “Just because you’re jealous you’re not one of them…”

A snigger offscreen catches his attention. Matteo would know that laugh anywhere. He swallows around a sudden anxiety that sets up camp in his throat. He should let David know. The summer has slipped away from him, and the intensity of the ache that missing David has caused sits in his chest, a constant companion. He’d thought he had time to work it all out. He’d thought he could come to it organically, that the right time would appear and he could just… say it. But now he’s here, on his last night in Italy, and he’s no closer to saying anything than he was when he first got the impulse.

The problem is that all the other boys are there too. They’re all so invested in watching Matteo getting ready to come back to them that he can’t feel too unhappy about it. It’s kind of nice to know these people care enough to oversee his packing even in a different country. But part of Matteo uncharitably wishes it was just David, that they could have this last time together over their phones. 

He’s enjoyed their few conversations which rambled long into the night so much that he’s loath to acknowledge that they’re over. Like summer is almost over, like everything that’s been coming to a head for so long.

He shoves the last shirt into the bag and tries to zip it up. It resists, the clothes spilling out as he wrestles with one edge. 

“Definitely too much stuff,” David says, leaning into the frame when Matteo glances up at the sound of his voice. He flushes when he realises just how pavlovian his response to David is, and how much he wants his approval.

“If you can do better, come help out,” Matteo grumbles, trying a different angle in his attempt to get it closed, finally leaning on it in frustration.

“I would if I could,” David says. There’s a quality in his voice that speaks of something. Matteo wishes again that it could be just the two of them. It’s things like this, small comments that mean everything and nothing, that make Matteo wonder. That make him want to have the courage to say all the complicated things he’s been feeling.

He looks up carefully, trying to trace whatever it is that’s showing on David’s face. He’s turning to look at Jonas, and the fleeting expression that had sat alongside the softness in his tone is disappearing. 

Watching David, Matteo wishes he lived in some other universe. One where it  _ is _ just David and Matteo. One where he has the courage to push past all the uncertainty, all the fears and worries about the future. One where they can hide in their own world, sheltered from everyone else and able to explore things together. Just the two of them.

Carlos adds, “if you’re so weak, Luigi, I’m sure your nonna could help out; she’s probably stronger than you,” and Matteo flips a finger up at him. 

Carlos’s interruption is a reminder that he doesn’t live in that other universe, and that even thinking about changing things is stupid right now. The boys and their boisterous intervention in everything Matteo does are a wake up call. Now isn’t any sort of time to delve into the sorts of thoughts that are better suited to late evenings staring at a ceiling while thinking about the uncertain future.

So he shakes off everything that isn’t focused on the packing, and manages to enjoy the banter as he finally forces the bag into some sort of submission.

He’ll be home soon and all this aching longing that the summer has dragged up can be set to rest. In fact, it seems like there’s no point spilling any of these thoughts. He and David haven’t spent that much time on the phone this summer, and the longing Matteo’s been feeling is probably just born of a summer spent away from the people he’s grown to care so much about. He knows better than this, knows he should be careful. When it comes right down to it, letting the aches of a summer dictate how he approaches the future is probably reckless. Stupid. Maybe there’s a good reason why he’s never been able to bring it up with David.

He flops down onto the case at the thought, a sense of relief coursing through him as he gives himself permission to push all of that stuff away. Jonas laughs.

“Luigi’s so tired from that tiny bit of exertion he can’t even stand up. Some things never change, I guess.”

Matteo flips him off as he realises that sitting on the case has pressed it down enough to make it possible to zip. The boys hoot as he tries to twist enough to grasp the zip while still seated, and he laughs along with them. Their insults swirl around him as he finishes wrestling with the bag and gets it closed properly. 

This is what he should be focused on: his friends, and the final few days they’ll all be able to spend together before school starts again. All that other stuff… well that can stay here in Italy where it belongs.

_ Late Summer 2019 _

There’s part of Matteo which laughs at how naive he was in Italy. There really was no chance he was going to be able to park any of his feelings the way he’d imagined. It shouldn’t even really have taken David’s actions at the airport to remind him of that. Feelings, once they’re turned on, are hard to turn off.

There’s another part of him which knows why he tried to do it. They’re starting a new school year. The final school year. That’s big enough and scary enough without the fear of everything else changing around him as well. That small boy lying in the grass after running from their first attempt at exploration knew what he was on about. The desire to keep everything in one crystal moment, unchanged and unchanging, is still with him. Letting himself acknowledge what he’s been feeling is too big and too scary to add to the mix of things he can’t control.

But here in the deep night, where there’s no light to illuminate anything, Matteo ironically thinks he can see more clearly than he ever has before. There’s a pulse in the air around them, a tight tugging in his chest as he looks at David, trying to make out anything of his face in the darkness.

“You were going to say something?” David asks carefully, his voice whispering so close to Matteo's ear. He shivers, nerves tingling through every inch of his body. He shuts his eyes against the hope he can hear in David’s voice.

It all comes down to this. If he does this, if he says it, then everything changes and all the promise of that long ago night is shattered, morphed into something different. But then nothing gets to stay the same, no matter what the outcome, and part of Matteo still wonders if he really wants to do it. When he hears a tiny sigh, seemingly of disappointment, Matteo opens his eyes, makes out David’s glistening in the dark.

“I… yeah,” Matteo admits. “I was. But…”

His heart is hammering, beating so hard he’s sure David must be able to hear it, given how close they’re standing. 

“But?”

“But I don’t know how to say it. I don’t know if I  _ can.” _

He can hear the quiver in his own voice and winces. It should be easier than this, he thinks grumpily. They’ve been friends for years, they know each other better than almost anyone else in the world. Why the fuck can’t he just  _ say _ it?

David’s laugh is the last thing he expects. And yet, it’s so perfect right now. That laugh has always been able to ground Matteo, and teasing has always characterised their friendship. This makes it easier, he thinks taking a deep breath. This normalises whatever is going on here.

“Okay,” David says, the quiet surety in his voice different somehow to anything that might have been indicated by that laugh. It’s so dark that Matteo can barely make him out, but it seems like he’s nodding. “Let me try? Maybe I’m better at words than you.”

Rolling his eyes, Matteo finds himself smiling. Because now he’s sure. They’ve always been on the same page, always able to read each other, to understand what’s going on inside each other’s heads. And somehow Matteo had lost that, so caught up in his  _ own _ head over the last few days that he didn’t let himself feel his way as usual. Didn’t let himself really notice the things David has been doing.

But now. Now he knows it was all real, and true. David doesn’t even need to say it for him to  _ know. _ And yes, this will still change everything. But everything was changing anyway, so why not take a chance on this change being something that’s good? He feels like he’s poised on the edge of a cliff, ready to step back or step off. And suddenly. Suddenly… staying in a brittle moment where everything remains as it did when they were young isn’t quite as appealing anymore.

So he nods, then realises David probably can’t see him so he adds, “yeah okay,” as he steps off the metaphorical edge of that cliff, ready to find out if they’ll plummet or soar.

“You wanted to say...” David says, his hand reaching up to cup Matteo’s cheek, making him shiver even in the heat of the night. “That we should explore whatever the fuck is going on here. You wanted to say we should… that we could maybe…”

He trails off, and Matteo gets that. It’s big and it’s powerful and it’s hard to express in any way that makes any sense. He laughs, letting his own hand come up to tangle his fingers in the hand that still rests on his cheek. He squeezes, lets David feel everything through his fingertips.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “That’s what I wanted to say.”

David nods, Matteo can make it out in the darkness this time, and that’s all the warning he gets. Then lips are on his and his fingers tighten in David’s as he kisses back. The tight, tense thing that’s been sitting in his chest loosens and takes flight. He feels lighter, more free. Kissing David feels as natural as breathing, as if they should have been doing this forever.

They break apart, but not so far that they let go of each other. “Mmmm okay,” David murmurs finally. “That was…”

Matteo laughs again, giddy with the new lightness he’s feeling. “Yeah it was.”

David licks his lips and Matteo’s heart flutters at the sight barely visible in the dim light. He sighs, contradictorily wants to hold onto this moment forever now that he’s decided to let time do as it pleases, desperate to keep this feeling of newly expanded potential before it dissipates into the night around them. 

“I’m not sure we explored enough,” David says, and he’s back to teasing now, his voice all amused poise even while his hand comes up to caress Matteo’s cheek and his breath whispers over his heated skin. “We need more data.”

“Oh we do, do we? What are you going to do with all this data when you’ve gathered it?”

David’s only explanation is to move his hand so it’s now cupping the back of Matteo's head, tangled in his hair and lightly scratching his scalp. He draws Matteo back into another kiss, and everything else fades away, the gloating comment he was about to make about making David speechless dying on his own tongue.

They don’t need to say anything more. The future can wait, along with all its change and the unknown. All that matters right now is this moment, here and now, with the two of them.


	5. Chapter 5

_ Late Summer 2019 _

Matteo stretches, back popping a little as he settles back down under the covers, shielding his eyes from one intrusive bar of sunlight peering around a curtain that’s been left slightly open. It’s early, probably too early to be awake particularly after the events of the previous night kept them up late. But there’s an energy buzzing through him which prevents any relaxation back into sleep. The dizzying lightness he’d felt since David had kissed him is thrumming through his body still.

“Stop wriggling,” an amused voice comes from behind him, and Matteo twists his neck to look at David. At his boyfriend. His best friend. He grins.

“Can’t help it.”

David groans theatrically, kicking out with one leg that then ends up trapped between both of Matteo’s. They wrestle for a moment, until Matteo ends up trapped within David’s embrace, warm arms snugging him tight to David’s chest, and his breath warm on Matteo’s neck.

“You smell good,” Matteo says on a quiet sigh, making David laugh. 

“Sweaty and gross, more like.”

Matteo shakes his head and turns in David’s arms, squirming until he’s even closer, head tucked in under David’s chin and lips pressing a small kiss to his neck. “Nope. It’s good,” he affirms. “Like lake water and warmth.”

Matteo feels rather than sees David’s smile on his ear, and it makes him shiver, the delicate touch of his breath ghosting over Matteo’s skin. He tightens his grip on David and lets out a contented hum.

His fingers quest up and in under David's t-shirt and he half expects David to brush him away as he always has. But instead, David laughs and lets his own fingers slide up Matteo's side where his shirt has rucked up. A buzzing energy fizzes under his skin and Matteo gasps. The heady joy of being allowed to do this is close to overwhelming. So he slips his fingers out and runs them down the outside of the t-shirt.

“I like the way this feels,” he says. 

He means the way it’s all just David's skin under the shirt, a single long line from waist up to shoulder, with no extra cloth setting up barriers along the way. David gets it, Matteo’s sure. His fingers tighten on the skin at Matteo’s waist and he brushes his own kiss over Matteo’s ear.

“I feel good with you.”

The response isn’t anything Matteo was expecting, but it makes sense. They’ve always been easier with each other than with others. Even Jonas has never had the same sort of connection. In hindsight, Matteo thinks he should probably have known long ago that this moment was inevitable. He should have known that the way he feels about David is different.

“Me too, with you.” 

By which Matteo means, and he’s sure David understands as well, that he feels like he can stop hiding in his oversized clothes, that he can relax and let someone else in enough to be floppy and lethargic in his presence.

David’s fingers tangle in Matteo’s hair and he tilts his head back asking for a kiss when there’s a rattling buzz from the floor and Matteo groans.

“Seriously? Two days in a row?”

David giggles, the sound so lively and comfortable that Matteo’s heart flips over. He’s so damn fucked right now. If he thought it was bad when he was pining from a seeming distance, it’s nothing on how he feels now he knows what it feels like to kiss David, to hold him all night. 

“We should go hang with the others,” David says as he leans down to grab his phone. 

“We don’t have to,” Matteo groans, hiding his face in the pillow. “We could just stay here and cuddle.”

The smile David gifts him is so fond that Matteo can’t hold himself back. He reaches out, strokes his fingers along that face, lets them drift to his arm. Let’s himself actually enjoy feeling the solid strength of his new muscles.

“It’s the last day before school,” David reminds him, smiling as if he knows exactly where Matteo’s thoughts are drifting. Matteo wonders, not for the first time, if the newfound muscles were for his benefit. The idea makes him shiver in a whole new way. David looks back over his shoulder, all lean lines and strength, adding, “we agreed at the start of the summer that we’d go to this.”

“I can’t be held accountable for what I said when I was getting ready to go on a torture holiday.”

Matteo reaches out, tries to entice David back into his arms with a questing hand on his waist. David pushes him, laughing. “A torture holiday? So dramatic!”

Matteo shrugs, unwilling to remember that anyway. He was so miserable, caught up in his feelings for David but unable to express them, so sure that the summer would stretch long and lean before him and with the dreaded final year of school looming once he came back.

“Felt like torture,” he mutters, flopping backwards as David stands and reaches for his clothes. He doesn’t like remembering that day at all, but he knows he agreed to this final event of the summer. So he too slides his feet over the edge of the bed and reluctantly gets ready to join the others.

_ Early Summer 2019 _

“I don’t really have to, right?”

Matteo slings his bag up onto his back and turns to look back at the bedroom he’s not going to see for too many long weeks. His bed stands in the middle, properly made for once with the covers drawn tight over the sides and the pillows lined up side by side. All the rest of his things are tidied away onto various surfaces in an array of neat piles. It’s so unfamiliar, so sterile and not reflective of his usual preferences, that looking at it brings it all home, makes it  _ real.  _ He really has to do this.

“Yeah, you kind of do,” David says in an echo of that thought. 

His voice holds the strained type of cheer people put on when they’re trying to make the best of a situation that isn’t really ideal. Matteo knows it’s for his benefit, because he’s behaving like a petulant child, and he feels like such an asshole that he’s made his reluctance so clear that his friends are being this sort of fake peppy to try to make him feel better.

There was a time when Matteo thought he might be feeling something for David, that they might be able to explore something together. But that’s gone now, lost in the familiarity of this sort of moment. That David caters to his tendencies with this sort of strained happiness makes it very clear what the relationship is: an older brother with his annoying younger sibling who needs to be cajoled into whatever unpleasant thing the grown ups have decided they have to do.

“It’ll be over before you know it,” Jonas chimes in, and at least  _ his _ voice is more natural. 

Matteo glances at David and catches him watching Matteo with a solemn sort of expression on his face. It slips quickly into a blinding smile, making Matteo’s heart squirm in agony. It’s so obviously an attempt to look happy when he’s not really.

David catches his eye again, something swims in his expression, his face changes, softens somehow, and he opens his mouth as if to speak. Suddenly, Matteo doesn’t want to hear it, doesn’t want to hear the platitudes again. Again berating himself for the way he’s dragging everyone down with him, Matteo tries valiantly to smile at his friends, cutting David’s words off before they have a chance to come out, with a faked cheerful hum.

“You’ll remember to stay in touch?” he asks, knowing as he does so that he sounds really desperate and clingy. It goes against the grain of everything he’s always tried to be: aloof, distant, unable to be shaken by anything. But all that’s crashed down now that he’s facing so much time away from these people who mean so much to him.

David rolls his eyes, and that is at least finally something more natural from him, more like their friendship of old. “As if life here is going to be so great that we’ll forget.”

“Better than Italy,” Matteo mutters morosely. 

“Yeah, Italy. Only somewhere warm and sunny where you have the world’s best nonna cooking so much food for you that you’ll surely be fat by the time you get back, and a million sources of water for simming right in your backyard,” Jonas says, the sarcasm dripping off his voice.

It makes Matteo laugh, which he knows is the point, and he shoves Jonas. “Why don’t you go instead,” he suggests. “If you like it so much.”

Jonas looks like he might even be considering it, a pensive finger tapping at his lip, when David shakes his head, laughing. “Wouldn’t work. Your hair’s the wrong colour to trick Nonna into believing you’re her grandchild.” He pats Matteo on the back, almost knocking the bag off his shoulder. “You’re going to have to suck it up, Luigi.”

It’s lightly meant, but it makes Matteo’s chest squeeze. If he needed any reminder that he’s not really wanted here, this is it. Deep inside, he knows that’s not charitable, but he can’t help the pain. He wishes they wanted him to stay as much as he does, but it seems like they’re perfectly sanguine that he’s going.

Matteo takes one last look back at his room and his heart twists. He really doesn’t want to leave it behind, not this year. Not when this is their last summer of freedom before having to become serious about their plans for the future. Not when they had so much planned which was all interrupted when his father had organised this trip to visit and no amount of pleading had changed the time he was expected to spend in Italy.

He wants to stay so badly it hurts, wants to play in the pool and mess around with his friends, exploring the parts of the city they still haven’t penetrated. And yet, he knows this is it. He’s leaving and there’s nothing he can do about it.

Something of the feeling must be showing on his face, because Jonas slings an arm around his shoulder, this time dislodging the bag completely. It thumps to the ground with a loud bang, punctuating the morose feeling of the day.

“What say we have a big party day the day before school goes back? All of us together, the whole crew. Like one last day of summer before it all starts again.”

David whoops and throws his arms into the air, punching the sky in his jubilation. His joy is infectious, and Matteo can’t help but smile at the antics. He shrugs.

“Yeah that sounds okay,” he admits. “Something to look forward to when I get back anyway.”

They banter happily about the plans for the day as they walk Matteo down his stairs and out into the sunshine. It does lighten his mood a little, knowing he has this to come back to. One final day of summer. One final day when they can still be kids.

_ Late Summer 2019 _

There’s some sort of melancholy that comes with the ending of something. The fact that the summer is over, or near enough to being over, should be enough to make Matteo feel that sad, restless mood sweeping over him. That feeling has been his constant companion during his time in Italy, and he’d expected it to remain now that the new school year is so close upon them. Instead, he’s happy here in this small bubble. 

There are even more people here than Jonas had promised that long ago day when summer was just beginning and stretched ahead as some sort of lengthening torment. They’re scattered around the edges of the park, leaning up against tree trunks, or flopped out, long and lean soaking in the late summer sun.

“Luigi, what is this?” Abdi asks as he plops himself down next to the patch of sun Matteo and David have carved out for themselves. He waves his hand at the two of them as if in illustration.

Matteo’s head is resting on a squished up canvas bag that holds sunscreen, hats and a towel and David's head is in his lap. That in itself isn’t unusual. They all tend to lie all over each other, a pile of bodies and limbs from which no-one can tell who is who. But there must be something about the way they’re holding themselves that’s alerting everyone.

Matteo squints at Abdi, trying to figure out what to say, when David intervenes. “What do you think this is, Abdi?” he asks, lazily scrolling through his phone. There’s a tone to his voice that alerts Matteo to what he’s intending to do, and he grins.

Abdi casts a long look at him and shrugs. “I don’t know. You guys just seem a bit different today, that’s all.”

“Apparently we’re different today, Luigi,” David says, laughing and he twists to look up along Matteo’s body and into his face. “Why do you think that might be?”

Matteo lets his fingers do what they’ve wanted to do for a long time now, and slides them into David’s hair, feeling the way it moves under his touch, head tilted so he can watch David’s eyes flutter closed under his ministrations.

“I can’t imagine,” Matteo mutters quietly. 

He leans up onto his elbows then sits up, dislodging David’s head. He grumbles as he repositions himself on Matteo’s legs again. Matteo feels a sudden desire to make it obvious to everyone, and his fingers tighten in David’s hair. His gaze meets a reciprocal glee in David’s eyes as they open to look up at him. He grins, leaning over so he’s hovering with his lips just over David's.  _ His _ eyes gleam with a frustrated amusement at Matteo’s antics and he lifts one hand to pull Matteo down to him. Their lips meet, and beyond the gasp Matteo can hear from Abdi, all he can register is the way David’s lips feel on his, how beautiful it is to be able to do this. He smiles as he pulls back. David looks about as dazed as Matteo feels.

“About time,” a new voice chimes in, and Matteo reluctantly stops looking at David long enough to register who it is. Jonas is chuckling when he sits next to Abdi, knocking his shoulder and finally drawing his attention away from Matteo and David. Abdi’s mouth snaps shut and he blinks.

“You two are…?”

Matteo rolls his eyes. “Yeah we are,” he says. “Is that a problem?” His fingers tangle further into David's hair, needing the reassurance of his steady presence. There’s something about this moment that causes a momentary flicker of terror to take up residence in his chest. He needs the boys to be okay with this, so badly. 

Abdi shakes his head sadly. “No. Apart from how I lost the bet.”

It’s Matteo's turn to blink. “The bet?”

“Ohhhhh, you didn’t know.” Abdi’s voice holds all the horror of someone who’s been caught out and it’s only Jonas’s booming crack of laughter that saves everyone from a very awkward moment. 

“Your faces!” Jonas cackles, pushing out with his foot and bumping Matteo's leg, close to David’s head. “It’s been so obvious all summer. We were just waiting to see how long it would take.”

“Obvious?” Matteo says at the same moment that David asks, “what do you mean all summer?”

“Dude,” Jonas says, his eyes rolling in exasperation. “The way you moped without Luigi here!”

“And the way he didn’t want to go and just wanted to talk to you in our chats,” Abdi adds.

Jonas shrugs. “Obvious.”

“You guys are assholes,” Matteo grumbles, lying back down on the bag, and letting his fingers play with David’s hair again.

“So anyway, Carlos won. He said the day before school.” Jonas pouts. “He’s going to be so obnoxious about this.”

“Maybe we can just not tell him?” Abdi suggests. “You guys can keep it a secret for like a day more, right?”

“Nope,” David says, his head back in Matteo’s lap and his eyes alight in a way that lights Matteo up from the inside when he looks at him.

“You got yourselves into this situation, you can get yourselves out.”

Both Jonas and Abdi groan theatrically, but it’s nice. Under all the banter there’s a loving acceptance of the two of them. It makes it all a little easier to bear. Summer is over, school is near and yet change doesn’t have to be so bad. Sitting here, sun warming his face and his hands still curling in his new boyfriend’s hair, Matteo realises that Nonna was right. The future is what you make of it, and running from change never made it any easier.

_ Late Summer 2019, Italy _

Matteo’s bags are packed, the boys long since signed off after their weird obsession with watching him pack, and he’s at a loose end. Sighing, he pulls his phone out of his pocket and glances at the last set of messages from his father, apologising that he can’t see Matteo on this last day before he heads back to Germany.

_ We’ll catch up soon, _ the last one reads, and Matteo’s lips twist up into a curl as he reads it again. That’s always been his father’s way of dismissing him. The promise of a future is always easier to make than any effort in the present.

It’s not even that Matteo wants to spend that time with his father and his family. It’s been nice enough seeing them again, but they’re not people Matteo would go out of his way to spend time with if they weren’t family.

No, he’s happier here at Nonna’s, with the cousins just down the road and the warmth of her home setting him at ease. Still. He’s at something of a loose end. With only a few short hours before he’s due to get on the plane, there’s no way to start anything new and so he lies on the bed, staring at the roof and wondering what everyone else is up to.

There’s a soft rattle of knuckles on the door frame and he startles, sitting up on his elbows to see who it is. He’s half expecting a cousin or two, trying to spend one last morning swimming or riding a bike down to the field to kick a ball around. Instead, it’s Nonna, her eyes beaming.

“Come,” she says. “You must eat before you go back to that place you call home.”

Matteo laughs, used by now to the way she assumes they don’t eat properly at the flatshare. 

“I won’t starve, Nonna,” he says, climbing off the bed and following her out into the warm kitchen. The sun shines in through a wide window over the counter and blankets everything in a warm, golden glow. He swallows around a sudden blockage in his throat at the realisation he needs to leave, needs to head back home, back to all the worries about school and the normal drudgery of life.

Summer really is coming to an end, and he has to say goodbye to the person who made this time feel like home.

Nonna’s pottering around, clanging pans and pots onto the stove top and rustling in the fridge for the things she’s going to need.

“You, get the flour,” she instructs.

Matteo does as she asks, the rhythms they’ve slid into over the last few weeks coming as naturally as breathing. They work in silence for a few minutes, but then she bumps his hip with her own.

“You aren’t happy, I think,” she says quietly when he glances at her with a quizzical brow raised. 

“No, I am,” he says. At her disbelieving snort, he shakes his head with a wry smile. She never lets him get away with anything like this. He shrugs. “I just… I’m not sure about what I want to do and I’m supposed to know by now. And with school starting soon...”

She laughs, cutting him off, her deft hands kneading quickly, muscle memory guiding her as she watches him closely. “Yes, all that. But I think there’s more,” she says. “You talk on that phone so much this summer.”

Blushing, hoping she hadn’t followed all the things he and David had said in their long and rambling conversations, Matteo shakes his head. “I just miss my friends.”

“Mmmm,” she says. “Maybe one friend more than others?”

Matteo shrugs, unwilling to give voice to the things he’s been thinking and wondering over the last few weeks in particular. He’d decided to put all that aside, to focus on the coming year, trying not to tilt everything else off kilter. So the soft humming noise he makes is noncommittal.

Nonna laughs quietly and lets him be. But she clearly can’t resist one final admonishment. “You hide so much, Matteo. Maybe you should stop hiding and start living.” She presses the bread down into a pan with deft fingers, puts on the final touches, and sets it in a warm bar of light near the window to rise. Patting his hand, she turns to gather up some glasses and a pitcher she’s kept cooling in the fridge. “Maybe if you stop hiding so much from yourself and your friend, you’ll learn what to do for school as well,” she says.

With a wry smile, Matteo follows her. He knows it’s no use to argue with her. She just nods wisely and tells him to wait and see and then when things work out how she predicted, she smiles and nods as if she’d known all along. If things don’t go as she expects, she just tells him he should wait longer.

It’s not a bad way to be, he thinks as he leans back in the chair out the back of her home and takes a sip of the refreshing lemonade she’s made. Nonna certainly isn’t beset by fears and worries about the future the way Matteo always seems to be.

He has to go home, summer is at an end, and whatever will come is going to come. He really should just let it do whatever it wants. He’ll be seeing the guys soon enough and when he does… well, it’ll be time enough then to figure out what he wants from his future.

“Cheers, Nonna,” he says, raising his glass to her.

She smiles over the lip of her own. “So you’ll stop hiding and talk to your friend?” she asks.

“We’ll see.”

“Don’t leave it too long, Matteo. The future is only something to fear if we refuse to face it.”

She bustles away then, going back into the kitchen to prepare for this final lunch together, and Matteo is left with his thoughts. She’s right, and he knows it. But facing the future head on isn’t exactly easy. So he settles back in his chair, takes another sip and pushes it all away until he has to deal with it. When he gets home.

_ Late Summer 2019 _

Thinking back to that conversation with Nonna, Matteo cringes at how stubborn he was. She was right; she’s always been right. If it’s not going well, then it’s not the end. The party is winding down, long shadows lengthening over the ground as the press of evening comes ever closer, and everyone is gathered in larger clumps dotted around various cooking spots.

He glances over at David, shining and bright in the glow of the lamps they’ve all set up along the perimeter of the park. He seems to feel Matteo’s eyes on him and looks up. He smiles, a radiant energy blossoming on his face. Catching his breath, and wondering if he’ll ever get over seeing that look on that face when David looks at him, Matteo smiles back. Beckons, tilting his head in invitation. That’s all it takes. David gives an amused pout and says something to Abdi and Sam, who laugh and wave him off.

In no time at all he’s by Matteo’s side, one arm slipping around in behind his hip, and a soft kiss pressing to his cheek. Flushing, Matteo flickers his eyes around at those nearby, both wanting and dreading the teasing he’s sure will come. However, those who have noticed seem unphased, and most people haven’t paid any attention at all. It’s nice, just being treated like everyone else. They’re not different than Kiki and Carlos, after all. Friends who got together, a smaller connection in the larger connection of the whole group.

“How are you?” David asks quietly, his eyes watching Matteo’s face closely in the dimmed light. 

“I’m good.” Matteo smiles, squeezes David to him. “Ready to go home, ready to start fresh tomorrow.”

“Who are you and what have you done with Luigi?” David asks with a laugh, darting out of Matteo’s reach as he tries to tackle him for that comment.

“I’m serious,” Matteo says. “The last thing Nonna said to me before I left was to stop being scared of the future.” He chuckles softly. “Didn’t really understand that before today, but I get it now.”

“What changed?” David says, his fingers back on Matteo’s waist now that he’s sure an attack isn’t about to come.

Matteo shrugs, smiles. Feels the stupid happiness welling up inside him again. “You happened,” he says quietly, watching David’s face slip into something that’s almost smug at the words. Matteo shakes his head and rolls his eyes. David’s mouth quirks into something soft and fond, something that suggests that he understands what Matteo means.

It sounds like one of those stupid ‘live life to the fullest’ movies that always seem to come out, and yet there’s a truth in it. It’s not just David, of course. It’s the slow growing recognition that no matter how hard you try, you can’t make things stay the same. That even if you do, it can’t ever  _ be _ the same. David’s just the most visible representation of the things Matteo has been learning.

Matteo knocks his shoulder with his own. “I don’t know. I just always wanted everything to be like it was when we were kids, you remember?”

Smiling as if he too can see tiny Jonas, Matteo and David in his mind’s eye as they clattered out of the first building they explored in a blind panic of adrenalin and thundering heartbeats, David nods. 

“Life was good back then,” he says, echoing the thoughts Matteo has always had about the seemingly perfect moments they shared.

“It was.” Matteo nods, reaches up to caress David's face, reminds himself of everything he has now. “And it took me too long to realise that life can be just as good now too. Even if it is different.”

“Oh, so your life right now is amazing just because of me?” David’s voice is soft, teasing, with a hint of his newfound smugness. Matteo rolls his eyes again, but he pulls David in for a kiss anyway. Because he wants to, because no matter how smug David is about it he has the truth of it. The kiss grounds him, in a way he thinks was almost inevitable. Who they are to each other may have changed, but the effect David has on him will always be the same.

A loud noise echoes around the park, and Matteo's attention is drawn away from David. Jonas hollers, his hands raised above his head in victory and the group of people around him are laughing at whatever he was doing, slapping him on the back and cheering with him. 

Jonas, Abdi, Carlos. Even the girls. They all have a part in this too. If things had stayed the same as when they were young and a confirmed threesome, Matteo would never have met half of these people. Jonas and Hanna wouldn’t be where they are now, Kiki and Carlos too. Amira would never have joined them, and Matteo wouldn’t know her brothers and their friends. 

It’s taken him far too long to realise that change can be as welcome as it is inevitable. He may still not know what he wants to do when he finishes school, he may have chosen his subjects with no real plan in place, but for once Matteo feels like the future is a place of promise rather than one to be feared.

Music drifts to them from the other group, and it becomes obvious what Jonas was doing as he draws Hanna towards him and gives a formal bow while holding her hand. She throws her head back, eyes alight, and then does an exaggerated curtsy before they start dancing, Jonas holding his hand up for her to twirl in under it. Others join them as the enticing beat of the music picks up.

“We should go join them,” David suggests, nodding at the others. “There’s time for one last dance before we head back, surely.”

He waggles his shoulder suggestively, shimmying in a parody dance that makes Matteo push him with a fond exasperation. But he allows himself to be pulled towards the others in David’s wake, drawn in towards the atmosphere, to the way this last evening fills him with warmth. Surrounded by all his friends, Matteo laughs his way into the future.


End file.
